


My Babysitter Was a Teenage Werewolf

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alive Laura Hale, All the Hales Are Trolls, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Amorality, Awkward Sexual Situations, BAMF Stiles, Biting, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Gallows Humor, Horror, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Magical Tattoos, Mystery, Pack Cuddles, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Build, Slow Build Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Topping from the Bottom, Werewolf Courting, Werewolf Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-06-08 14:21:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 130,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15245265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: When he was thirteen, Peter babysat a four-year-old Stiles Stilinski and the Hales ended up having to leave town that very night.Fourteen years later, Laura Hale goes missing in the vicinity of Beacon Hills.For the record, Peter didn’t plananyof this.  He literally just watched the boy because Talia made him.This is why nobody asks him to watch the children, and it’snothis fault.9/15/18:Epilogue 3 of 3 added.  Stiles and Peter finally get it on, 21 chapters later.





	1. Prologue

When it comes to Peter, Talia loves her little brother fiercely, but she’s not an _idiot_. Peter’s kind of a troublemaker.

Okay, he’s a budding psycho, and their parents don’t seem to give a shit and them being werewolves in a hunter’s world, that’s just about telling Peter sure, go ahead, get yourself and the rest of us killed because when nobody wants to set your barriers, you’re just going to keep pushing them till somebody gets shot. Honestly, it makes Talia just want to throw up her hands and kill them, since at least that’d be constructive murder.

That’s probably just the stress of being a newly-single mother with three kids talking. Probably. At any rate, she doesn’t kill her parents, useless-verging-on-child-abuse that they’re being. They’re still a great deterrent against other packs and she needs that right now, while she figures out what the hell _she’s_ going to do about her family. But at the same time, she can’t just sit back and watch Peter throw himself away like this—and all right, she’s _not_ an idiot and she’s also not going to let her kids be the way Peter fails his way into being a better, more well-rounded, less selfish person. She already tried that with her ex and, well, now he’s an ex.

Anyway. She gets Peter a baby-sitting job.

“Winning over the local law is important now that Cochrane’s retired and they elected this out-of-towner,” she tells him as they drive over to the Stilinski household. “Dad and Mom have been letting this slide for years. We can’t.”

Peter pretends like he’s not listening, poking at the cell in his hand, but he’s hanging onto every word. He’s so, so smart, and so, so into anything that has to do with scheming, and so, so easy to read, even when Talia ignores her werewolf senses. God, if any hunter worth their guns came into town right now, he’d probably skip out of school to set a trap and end up stuffed and mounted before they even got the delinquency notice from the principal.

“I heard you the first time,” he mutters. “Play nice with the deputies, see which one of them’s careless about bringing the casefiles home, and then you and the parents are going to huddle up in the old factory again.”

“Who said they knew about this?” Talia says, deliberately keeping her eyes on the road when her brother perks up. “I told you, they haven’t bothered, so I’m not going to bother them now. This is our job, Peter.”

“Really?” he says, excited. Then he clears his throat and she can hear his limbs rearranging, just knows he’s trying to look like he’s lounging and not vibrating over there in shotgun. “Well, I guess that’s one way to ensure we hear the uncensored version of things. Though you know, Dad usually makes sure that things get cut out even when it’s not his hunt.”

Sometimes, Talia thinks, an alpha’s job isn’t so much to lead the pack as to just be its wise-ass sixteen-year-old to an idiot thirteen-year-old. Even though she’s actually nearing thirty. “Well, were you going to tell him?” she asks.

She makes the turn into the Stilinski driveway, then gives Peter a look. Peter, in turn, presents her with an utterly indignant expression and a strong whiff of nerves. “No!” he hisses. He glances up at the windshield as they both hear someone in the house head for the front door, then unsnaps his buckle and clambers over the gearshaft to glare in her face. “No, of course not, I don’t want to end up tossed out for the omegas any more than you do. Unless you were actually okay with what happened to Laurence?”

Talia knows her eyes are reddening, even as she forces her hand to release the steering wheel before she warps it. All the light’s coming through the windshield at Peter’s back so his face is blacked out, but she can still see how the line of his shoulders tenses, smell how the last bits of his excitement go sour. 

“Anyway, I’m not telling Dad,” Peter mutters, head twisting slightly to tilt his throat towards her as he hurriedly drops back to his side. His way of backpeddling.

She takes a deep breath, then catches his arm before he’s fully seated. “Laurence got what he was asking for.”

Peter does a double-take. Then twists sharply as the house’s front door opens; he’s too fluid about it, inhumanly supple, and Talia both wants to smack him upside the head for being so careless in front of the _deputy sheriff’s_ porch and tug him back out of the widening circle of light, back where it’s soft and dark and she can just…they just don’t have to do this. Except they do, actually.

“And I hate agreeing with our parents, and he could’ve waited till the kids were out of school for the year before he decided to blow up our marriage,” Talia goes on instead. Feeling petty, and therefore human, and so in an obscure way, as if she’s making them both safer. “Now we’ve got to come up with an excuse for him before the next parent-teacher conference. But never mind that, that’s not your problem. Your—”

“At least this way, they’re young enough to believe whatever we tell them. They don’t need to know what a moron he was. I could probably come up with a story,” Peter says, glancing at her and then away. Then again, his expression in the half-light is both arrogant, with that raised chin, and skittish, with that one hand on the door lever. “You know. If you want some help. I was kind of—you know I didn’t like him.”

“I know you have a whole notebook filled with thwarted murder plans, yes,” Talia says, and in the space of the second it takes Peter to smile, she finds her chest tightening up with nerves. She snorts at him and he even laughs, and she thinks it’s actually been a while since she spent time with him. Three kids and a husband…but one of them isn’t around now. “Peter, we’ve talked about—well, never mind, later. Right now, what I need you to do is just be _nice_.”

“Oh, I know, I know, it’s not as if I haven’t watched you with the kids,” Peter scoffs, opening his door. “He’s Cora’s age, it’s not like it’s rocket science when they’re that age. Just say hi to their invisible friends, make sure they don’t drown in the bathtub, and bribe them to go to sleep early.”

“Peter!”

He doesn’t even look at her as he flaps a hand over his shoulder. “I’ve got it, Talia,” he says crossly as she hurries around the front of the car to join him. “I know what I’m doing, just trust me, all right?”

“Well, at least remember small children have a disturbing tendency to overhear things and repeat them exactly to their parents,” she mutters as she catches up to him. She grabs his shoulder, gives his hair a last dusting over his grumbled protests, and then marches him up the steps to the couple waiting for them in the doorway. “All right, you’re on.”

Peter twitches his nose, but instead of grimacing at her, he turns forward and puts on a brilliant smile, the one he uses to make the teachers look the other way. Talia can hear Mrs. Stilinski’s heartbeat, the quicker of the two, start to calm, and she thinks privately that Peter’s not the only one in the family who can cook up a scheme or two.

Four hours later, Peter shows up at the back door of their house, blood in his hair, the front of his sneakers shredded where his claws are peeking through, a disturbingly silent little boy in tow. “It wasn’t me!” he hisses over and over again as Talia bundles them into the kitchen. “It wasn’t, I didn’t even _do_ anything, I don’t know where—”

Talia doesn’t like the way the boy’s huge eyes stare at them, but he’s not fussing and he doesn’t smell hurt so he’s less of an immediate priority. She plops him on the kitchen table and then closes and locks the door and takes stock. Her kids are upstairs sleeping, their parents are out in the preserve somewhere, and their Emissary’s out of town at some vet conference. “Hunters?”

Peter keeps favoring his side. The skin that shows through the ripped shirt is flawless, but that doesn’t necessarily mean what it looks with them. She pushes him into a chair and it’s telling that he lets her. “I don’t—I don’t know,” he says, looking up at her. “I was just reading the kid a story—I hadn’t even gotten around to poking around—and all the lights went out and someone else’s car was pulling into the driveway. But I think I—I think I lost them in the woods.”

He thinks. Talia presses her lips together, trying to think, and then starts as something clutches her forearm. It’s Peter, going to say something more—except then he doesn’t and instead only looks at her, young and frightened, without any bravado whatsoever.

“I think I did,” he whispers. “I tried. It’s been…maybe ten minutes since I saw one? But I was running—two miles, maybe three. And it’s—it’s strange out there tonight. I wasn’t sure if I saw—what I saw.”

She makes up her mind. Stretches one arm to the wall and shuts off the light—the Stilinski boy is still just _staring_ at them, staring at them with a one-hundred-percent human scent and no glow in his eyes but it’s still more unnerving than another alpha in full-throated challenge. She makes herself turn away from him, towards her brother. Who she might misunderstand, misread from time to time but she’s not right now, she knows he’s terrified and she has to make him _safe_. Him and her kids.

“Be quiet. Stay here,” she says, and the dark doesn’t quite muffle that little suck of breath. Peter has to be so contrary, his pride rearing up at the worst times, and if she didn’t have so much to do, she’d hug him for it. “No, you know what—” she slips to the side, soundlessly opens the fridge just enough to slide out the kids’ lunch bags “—start packing. Food and medicine. I’m going upstairs to get the kids and some clothes, I’ll get yours, oh, get—my laptop’s in the living room, get that and get all the files around it. Keep the lights off.”

“Got it,” Peter says, settling back down. “I’ll get the useful stuff from Dad’s office too. The cash and the flash drives.”

She leaves him to it and ferries her kids down in two trips. Laura and Derek are old enough at this point to realize when she’s this quiet, they need to be quiet too, and, much as that fills her with guilt, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to get them to grab one toy and one blanket and one book each. Cora, on the other hand—Cora understands this is not a good time but she’s just young enough that her impulse control is, well, she doesn’t have it. So she keeps fussing about why they have to get up and being tired and not wanting to.

Good girl that she is, Laura tries to shush her sister, but the more she hisses, the more Cora complains. “Be quiet!” Derek finally snarls.

“Don’t be mean!” Laura snaps back.

Talia’s about to scold both of them when Cora starts hiccupping in that way that means her lungs are warming up for a good cry. And now is just not the time, absolutely not, because they are almost packed and ready to go and all they have to do is get out to the car and she’s hearing things in the woods. Soft, creeping things, right at the edge of her range, and even though that means they still have several minutes and also it still could just be the regular wildlife—though her instincts are screaming otherwise—she’ll feel better once they put some distance in between. Space and time and a better place to pick a fight than a house with three small children in it.

Four, she abruptly remembers, as Peter hurries into the room and then flops so gracelessly under his burden of bags that at first she thinks he’s stumbled. But then part of him moves independently of the other parts, and as he sits up, muffling a curse behind his arm, the Stilinski boy _does_ stumble.

It’s a little in Cora’s direction and she scuffles back into Derek’s arms, nearly sending them both off their feet. Talia automatically puts her arm out to steady her son and ends up looking into the Stilinski boy’s eyes.

“I want my mom,” the boy says, in a very small, shaky voice.

“Stiles, you’ll see her in a little bit,” Peter grunts, shifting some bags around and then getting onto his knees. “I told you, we’re going to find her, we just needed to see my sister first. Because—um, because she has a car and I don’t, and do you want to have to walk again?”

“Did you make him?” Talia mutters, eyeing Stiles’ bare and dirty feet.

“If I had, we would’ve gotten here a lot faster, little sack of lead,” Peter mutters back, rolling his eyes. He tucks an unresisting Stiles into the crook of his arm with enough care that Talia moves on and turns to her own children.

They’re out of the house and in the car in another five minutes, and pulling away just as the noises Talia’s been tracking start to resolve into booted footsteps. It’s still another ten before Talia’s far enough down the road that there are houses with lights on, and too many witnesses for anything too crazy to happen.

“Yeah, Talia and I already—I know. I _know_ , they—look, I—but—you—can I just—okay, but—but—” Peter’s voice is rising in frustration, but by the time Talia looks over, he’s already turned off his phone. He looks at it for a moment, the muscles in his half-raised arm bunched tensely, and then drops his hand to his lap and thumps his head back. “God, _Dad_.”

“They know what’s going on?” Talia asks.

Peter’s fingers tighten around the phone again. Then he abruptly shoves it into his jacket pocket and yanks his hands back out and glares sullenly at the windshield. “Wouldn’t know. They just said keep driving till we’re out of the county, they’ll follow tomorrow. I guess we’ll find a hotel and text them or something…then maybe they’ll tell us who’s after us now. Said not to call them back till they say. As usual.”

“I know,” Talia sighs, irritated with them too. But her mind’s still ticking over with all the things they need to do, the watch-outs they can’t forget. “Well, let’s get out of town first, and then we’ll talk about whether—oh, damn it. Right.”

Her brother glances at her, then twists around to look into the backseat at the children. “We can just leave him somewhere,” he says. “I mean, there’s not really any good way to—they should’ve come home by now, and we’re not there and how I’m supposed to explain—”

“We’ll drop him off at the police station,” Talia says.

Peter lets out a scandalized yelp. “Do you _want_ to get me arrested?”

“No, but we can’t just—he’s Cora’s age, Peter, we can’t just stick him on the sidewalk and drive off,” Talia tells him, barely holding in her exasperation. “Listen, we’ll drive up, I’ll go in and decoy off whoever’s at the desk, and then you come in with him. With any luck, they’ll be so relieved to find him that that’ll give us time to get away and change cars.”

“Change cars? Oh, you mean license plates?” Peter says, interested again. 

“No, I mean cars. Use your brain, just a license plate isn’t going to do it,” Talia says.

Peter snorts, but it’s soft and distracted and she knows he’s doing exactly that: figuring out what they need to do to cover their tracks. And it should bother her that her barely-teenage brother’s who she’s relying on for that sort of thing when this entire night was supposed to be about getting him to bring out his caring human side. 

Well, that’s just fucked, Talia thinks savagely. End of the day, they’re pack, and before anything else, they survive. The human part is important, don’t get her wrong, but living comes first.

The drop-off happens perfectly. It helps that the station is practically empty and the cop manning the desk obviously has her mind elsewhere, constantly glancing at the crackling radio on the counter near her. Talia is in there just long enough to learn that nearly the whole town’s force has been called out to deal with suspected gunshots in the woods—she has to bite the inside of her mouth till it bleeds to keep a lid on her curiosity—and then she’s back in the car with her children, Peter scrambling into the seat next to her as they drive out of the parking lot.

“The cop’s got him, I heard her saying his name,” he says, buckling his seatbelt. “I think we’re good.”

“Till his parents ask what happened,” Talia mutters. She sees the sign for the interstate and breathes a little bit easier, knowing she can put on the speed now. 

They drive on in silence for several minutes. Talia loosens up, now that the immediate danger is past, and then, as the road coils out and her mind starts to jump forward to everything they’ve still got to do, a different kind of tension begins to settle in her, closing its bands about her chest. She sucks in a couple choice curses, thinking it over, but they get stuck in her throat and then smolder slowly, a nagging burn.

“We’re not coming back, are we?” Peter suddenly says.

She looks over at him. He’s looking out the window, body arranged in an indifferent slouch, but his hand is clenched in a fist at his knee. The corona from the car’s headlights catches the rounded, babyish curve of his cheek and she swallows hard against the way the burn in her throat goes bitter. She wants to tell him she’s so sorry.

But it’s Peter, so that’s not going to go over well, not when he’s trying this hard. And damn it, but at the very least, she can be a good sister to him, even if their pack might be splitting in two as they drive. “I probably should’ve just volunteered you to do yardwork for them,” she says.

Peter starts, then looks at her, wide-eyed with disbelief. Then he tosses himself back in his seat, harrumphing, and when Laura asks nervously what’s going on up there, he flaps a hand back over his shoulder. “Give me my bookbag, I’ll read you midgets a bedtime story,” he says.

“All right, Peter,” Talia says tolerantly. “I get it.”

“You’re gonna tell us a story?” Derek says warily, but he pushes a bag into Peter’s hand. “But you said bedtime stories are for babies.”

“Well, if you’re going to read them from those lame books,” Peter says, digging into the bag. “I’ll tell you one that’s actually useful.”

“All right, all right, you’re capable of babysitting,” Talia says.

Peter rolls his eyes at her and pulls out one of his notebooks. Talia starts to open her mouth and he very loudly starts into something about the battle of Salamis—oh, it’s one of his school assignments. Which still has far too much killing in it for her taste, but she knows if she says something, he’ll just protest that it’s factual _history_. And when she checks in the rearview mirror, her children don’t seem to be quiet because they’re intimidated. If anything, they just seem confused—Derek’s brow is furrowed so hard that Talia almost forgets she’s driving and reaches back to smooth it—but at least they’re focused on something besides what their mother is doing.

They aren’t coming back to this town, but things will be okay, Talia thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've read my other stories, you've probably figured out that I enjoy playing around with the Peter and Talia relationship, and figuring out why on earth an apparently loving mother would tolerate Peter's shenanigans around her children. Because I like Peter, but I'm not a Peter apologist. This take basically gives up on trying to make canon work and starts with the premise that Talia realized where Peter was bending early on, and decided to make sure it bent in a less-supervillain-y direction. Because supervillains tend to get killed sooner or later, not because she disapproved, since Talia's loving but not totally morally upstanding either.
> 
> Also bb!Peter's adorable. 
> 
> Cora and Stiles are both four, Derek's eight, Laura is nine, and Talia is twenty-seven.


	2. Chapter 2

_Fourteen Years Later_

“Your sister is an idiot,” Peter tells his equally idiot hulk of a nephew, who can’t stop trying to look over Peter’s shoulder. When Derek breathes on his ear, he introduces an elbow to the man’s sternum and then sits down in peace on the couch with the double handful of folders Derek’s just given him. “Why on earth would she think that stopping off in Beacon Hills is a good idea?”

Derek coughs unnecessarily hard, then grumpily drops into the chair opposite. “How should I know?”

The papers are news articles interspersed with printouts of various poorly-designed websites, the kind where the operators’ HTML skills don’t extend much past Comic Sans, garish font colors, and enabling the insertion of blurry photos “proving” the existence of alien mutilations or chupacabras. As is to be expected, most of them center in the northern California area near their old hometown, but they’re all so much useless trash, aside from giving Peter yet another reason to complain to his sister about her children’s ineptness at their own heritage. In theory, moving all the way to the East Coast should have settled their family cozily within a supernatural world with roots even deeper than organized crime.

In practice, Peter thinks as he flips through the papers, it’s just bred a complacent ignorance. They might hardly have to worry about hunters but they also have forgotten that hunters are very real and very lethal and not merely boogeymen for missing curfew. “So this is all you’ve found?”

“It’s all she sent me. Look, I didn’t know she was heading that way either till she was practically there,” Derek mutters. He watches Peter for a few seconds, then starts to fidget. “I told her it was a bad idea, all right? She called me from some rest stop and just said she’d run into this werewolf who’d heard about us, before we moved out here, and he said—”

“What pack?” Peter says, just as he comes across an article about a suspected serial killer in the Beacon Hills area. What catches his eye is the headline about ‘threefold death,’ but then he sees the date: a good four years ago. “Did you even think to ask?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did, and she said the guy was an omega, only talked to her for five minutes and then ran off, okay?” Derek’s chair has a creaking joint, and his fidgeting is just exacerbating the matter. “He told her that she looked like Mom and everybody knew the Hale House was a gate to hell, whatever that means.”

Peter suppresses a sigh and picks up his phone. A quick search tells him that the Druid, as the press had dubbed the killer, had been caught red-handed two months after the article, but had managed to evade the police long enough to hang herself in an abandoned house. “And then what, Laura decided to find him and let him know that it hasn’t been the ‘Hale House’ in over a decade? Of course your sister would take an interest in the historical record when your mother and I have spent years trying to erase it.”

“No, that’s not why—” Derek sounds agitated enough that Peter jerks the papers further onto his lap, and therefore avoids having them knocked astray when the other man jerks out of his chair. “Goddamn it, Peter. The last text I got from her was two days ago and her voicemail’s full and if all you’re going to do is yell at me for being an idiot—”

But when Peter moves the papers, his thumb slips across the phone and scrolls the article down, revealing a photo of their old house. He freezes.

“—booked a flight, I was just telling you so Mom wouldn’t get upset. Okay?” 

Derek’s voice is retreating. That’s why it manages to intrude on Peter’s shock—Peter looks up absently, then swears and drops phone and papers, and lunges forward to drag his nephew back. He shoves Derek back into the chair, then grabs at a sheet still floating in the air. Then at some of the rest, and then he gets down on his hands and knees and hastily pushes them together into a haphazard stack that he then disassembles across the length of the coffee table.

His nephew’s blessedly silent for a few minutes, and then Derek gets down on the other side of the table. He cranes his head, peering this way and that at Peter, biting his lip. Then that mulish look comes into his eye and he sighs loudly. “Look, Peter—”

“Your mother’s going to be upset. Are you out of your mind?” Peter mutters. Papers finally arranged to his satisfaction, he sits back on his heels and then looks at what he’s done.

“No, I’m just—I want to know if Laura’s all right.” Derek’s tone is equal parts belligerent and fearful. He puts his hands on the edge of the table as if he means to push over it and go at Peter, and then the fear clearly wins out, as he grips it instead. “Do you think something happened to her? What is all this stuff she sent?”

“It’s our house,” Peter says. He stares at it for another moment, pressing his lips together. Then he presses the heel of his hand against his temple, even though he knows it won’t do anything to stop the unease creeping up his spine, pulling his shoulders up against one dark, very long ago night in the woods.

There is very little in the world that truly frightens him. Intimidates him, makes him wary—he’s a rational man, and those are rational emotions to have in some situations. But fear has nothing to do with reason, and right now, what’s making him swallow hard isn’t a lack of reason. If anything, it’s the exact opposite.

“Peter,” Derek says, his voice oddly low. “Peter. Peter—just—what? _What_?”

Idiot nephew, Peter almost says, and the familiar aggravation pushes back the fear a little. He looks up, then points at the papers. “Our house. Serial killer who very likely was a darach, or had heard of them—hanged herself in it. Multiple shootouts resulting in dead or dying men found there—and they blame it on gangs but high-powered rifles are an odd weapons choice for that. Satanic cult arrested there with body parts showing odd human _and_ animal characteristics—”

“Peter,” Derek says again, staring down at the photos too. “Peter. You said our house _burned down_.”

“Well, because it _did_ ,” Peter snaps. “It did.”

* * *

Peter makes Derek rebook his flight, because he’s coming and so is Talia. “Did you honestly think I was going to lie to her for you,” he tells the other man. “Yes, Talia, your other child hasn’t been responding and it’s completely unrelated to the fact that your son’s just skipped out on helping with your dinner party this Thursday. Nothing to worry about here, trust me.”

Derek opens his mouth, then shuts it as Talia comes back to their seats with a giant frappucino for herself, fries for him, and a fresh external charger for Peter, whose phone battery is not living up to its warranty. Or to the research that he’s still trying to wrap up because their so-called Emissary is hung up with druid politics nonsense.

“Oh, the party’s canceled, don’t worry about that,” Talia says airily. She slurps at her frappucino, then forces some napkins on Derek. “And of course I don’t trust Peter to tell me where my children are. He’s _Peter_.”

“Ha ha,” Peter mutters at his phone, much more interested in how his dimming screen comes back to life on a handy statistical breakdown of missing-persons reports an alien-abduction conspiracy group has posted in an effort to make the ‘Beacon Hills Halo’ happen. The theory’s obviously insane and the less said about the nomenclature, the better, but the tracking appears to be sound. “Did Tyler get back to you with a local contact?”

“Well, as it happens, he does have a friend there—the town veterinarian.” When Peter looks up, Talia shares his look of resigned disgust at how conservative druids can be with their cover stories. “Alan Deaton, he’s already expecting us. We’re on for dinner about two hours after our plane lands.”

Derek perks up. “So the local pack’s on it?”

Talia sobers, her eyes flicking to Peter, and it’s not merely because they’re in an airport VIP lounge surrounded by the uninitiated. “No,” she finally says. She stares at Derek but he’s obviously going to ask; unlike Peter, she just sighs. “Derek, there is no local pack. There hasn’t been one since we left.”

That satisfies Derek for the time it takes for him to prod at his fries, and then he leans forward. “Is that part of what’s going on?” he whispers. “You two never said why we sold the land—you just said hunters drove us out.”

“Well, because when you’re an actual functioning adult, you’ll realize that paying property taxes on land you can’t visit is ridiculous,” Peter says.

“Peter,” Talia says, a subvocal warning growl in her voice. 

He looks up at her, annoyed—for one, Derek _never_ tracks down Laura from her in-town misadventures with her friends, just leaves Peter and Talia to do it—and something in her face stops him. The way she looks almost guilty, which, she being _his_ sister and them having _their_ parents, she never does publicly.

“Derek,” Talia starts after another moment, still looking at Peter. Then she grimaces, her shoulders going back, and turns to her son. “We might not have been completely truthful about why our family left Beacon Hills.”

“I kind of got that,” Derek says, because Derek has the emotional reception of a dead phone. “So what actually happened? It wasn’t hunters?”

“No, there were hunters. The Argents decided to do a sweep through the nearby woods that night. That’s how your grandparents got the injuries that eventually killed them,” Talia says.

Derek frowns. “Okay, but—couldn’t we have gone back after they left? And rebuilt the house, if they burned it down?”

“Well, actually, that’s…that might be where to start,” Talia says. “They’re not the ones who burned down the house.”

“That happened two months later,” Peter says. He catches Talia’s eye and while she hardly looks approving, she also doesn’t seem as if she’s going to finish this quickly, and they will have to get up to catch their flight soon. “You see, it was actually the hunting off-season, so when the local police heard gunshots, they used their heads and thought that sounds out of place, and turned out to look into it. And that generation of Argents decided they might as well meet force with force, and did something completely idiotic—they ran to the Nemeton and—”

“The what?” Derek says.

Peter stares at him. Then at Talia, who gives him an annoyed look right back, as if in the middle of finding her potentially-lost daughter isn’t a completely fitting time to question her children’s education in important things like—“It’s an evil magical tree, and it works when you make a blood sacrifice,” she tells Derek.

“That’s not all it—all right, fine, but don’t blame me when he dumps a half-eaten rabbit on one and accidentally wakes it,” Peter says, exasperated. “Anyway. There was a Nemeton, and as far as we can tell, at least one of the Argents tried to bind it in the middle of the shootout—”

“How do you know? Weren’t you out of town by then?” Derek asks.

At least he can follow a narrative, Peter thinks. “Yes, but when a Nemeton is roused, the entire neighborhood notices. That night I happened to be babysitting a local deputy’s—”

“Wait,” Derek says. “What. _That’s_ why you had that kid?”

“Honey, Peter’s taken care of you and your sisters since you were born,” Talia points out. “Just because he’s threatened to set traps for whichever of you sneaks into his room and sell them at a crossroads doesn’t actually mean he’s done that before.”

Derek blinks hard. “Well, yeah, that’s what I mean—okay, never mind. I’m just—okay. That apparently—so there’s an evil tree and somebody not Mom legitimately let you have a kid, for some reason.”

“ _And_ when I took said child safely to the police station so his parents would be able to find him later, like a responsible adult—” Peter stares at Derek till Derek makes a face and drops his eyes and at least pretends as if he believes what he’s being told “—we overheard the police radio. They were calling about men in the woods who turned into bats and things like that, which means the police weren’t the ones who’d been taken over by the Nemeton. Which I looked up after we’d left.”

“Okay. Okay, so…we left town because the Nemeton woke up?” Derek says slowly. He absently rattles his fries. “But then how is there even any town left, if that’s what happened? Shouldn’t the entire place be a ghost town?”

“Well, according to the news reports later, they must have interrupted whatever the Argents were doing, because they managed to arrest some of them, and there were only ten deaths all told. You need twelve for it to be irreversible,” Talia says. She lifts her hand, hesitates, and then puts her arm around Derek’s shoulders. “But still, it wasn’t safe to go back. We weren’t sure how we’d explain—our leaving so suddenly would have looked suspicious, and God knows what the Argents might’ve said before they died—”

“But I thought you said they were arrested,” Derek says, actually picking up an important detail. “Did that…change?”

Then again, he’s still looking at Peter when he uses that particular suspicious-verging-on-horrified tone. “It wasn’t us, Derek. We were halfway across the country at that point, and our parents were badly injured. We had enough to do just making sure no remnant of the Nemeton was clinging to them, or us.”

“Though he’s flattered you’d think he had that long of a reach at thirteen,” Talia says, giving Peter a warm smile.

Flattering, indeed. Even if he does possibly snort a little softer than he really deserves to at her. “According to the police reports, the arrested Argents all managed to kill themselves while in custody, one way or the other,” Peter says. “Though at least some of the deaths sounded as if they may have been due to the backlash from the Nemeton—you can’t half-wake something like that and not pay your due. The whole area’s been noticeably less stable since then, judging from what Laura put together and what I’ve been digging up now. I don’t think they ever really put it back to sleep.”

“But someone must have tried, since like you said, the town’s still there,” Talia says, looking at Derek. “The police are still there, too. I looked up the sheriff.”

“Yes, I’d _noticed_ ,” Peter says, glaring at her. As if that wouldn’t be the first thing he’d check.

“The current sheriff’s the father of the boy Peter was watching that night,” Talia tells Derek.

“I thought you were a responsible adult,” Derek says, looking slowly between them. “You think he might still be mad about it?”

Talia takes that one, and actually seems genuinely earnest about it. “Peter was, under the circumstances. We couldn’t exactly stop to explain—all we could do was leave the boy somewhere he’d be safe till things had settled down. And anyway, the police were busier afterward with other things.”

“Yeah, the Argents, you said,” Derek says. “But you didn’t say what happened to the house.”

“Well, it burned down two months later. Because it’d calmed down some and our Emissary at the time went back to see if they could cleanse the place, and retrieve more of our things before we completely abandoned it, and instead ended up getting into a fight with a squatter,” Talia says.

“Which required them to burn the house down,” Derek says skeptically.

Peter sighs. “She’s leaving out the part where the squatter was actually an insane former doctor who was experimenting with demons.”

Derek considers that for a few seconds, which does actually seem like a reasonable reaction. “In the same town where a Nemeton just exploded over everything?”

“At the time Beacon Hills had a psychiatric treatment facility that was actually a prison for supernatural wrongdoers, and they appear to have had a number of escapees that same night,” Peter explains, because honestly, that is also a reasonable reaction to have. “The good doctor was one of them. And we did live only about a mile away, and didn’t exactly have the time to lock up when we left. I suppose the house was handy.”

Derek takes another few seconds. “ _Why_ did we live in that town again? It sounds like literally everything was ready to kill us.”

“It really wasn’t that bad,” Talia says, startled. She gestures between herself and Peter. “Up till that night, it was a decent place to live. Your uncle and I grew up there, and…”

“And we left,” Peter says flatly, not willing to entertain his sister’s misguided nostalgia this time. He glances at the clock, then stands up and starts to gather his bags together. “And now your moronic elder sister is dragging us back. When we find her, I hope she has a _little_ more appreciation for the effort we put into raising you three to have a decent life expectancy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most U.S. chupacabra sightings center around the southern states, hence Peter's scoffing at any reputable sightings in NorCal.
> 
> Please note the role-reversal tag and expect a lot of Dramatic Irony.


	3. Chapter 3

Once they’re on the plane, Derek asks if he can help look through any of the new research Peter’s done. He’s uncharacteristically noncombative about it, and even takes notes on his phone when Peter lists out what he should look for, so Peter gets on the wifi and sends Derek the links and then expects that he might actually be able to catch up on some sleep during the flight. He’s been working nonstop since Derek told him about Laura and much as this _is_ his expertise, he’s not made of iron.

His sister, however, has other ideas, and pulls off his custom soundproof headphones as soon as he returns from the bathroom. “Cora’s probably renting our house out for a party as we speak,” she says under her breath.

“Oh, well, you did want to redo the walls. I suppose we would’ve had to have the drywall torn down anyway.” Peter snatches the headphones back from her but doesn’t put them back on. She’s just petty enough to make it into a game and they’re far too expensive for that. And only available online and God knows when he’s going to be able to get back home for a delivery.

Talia stands and looks at him till he sighs and scoots into the row, and then promptly deposits herself into the aisle seat. Which had been his, but when she wants to talk to him, she’ll use every dirty trick in the alpha playbook, up to and including taking her son’s seat. Derek hovers awkwardly in the aisle for a second, eyeing them, and then takes about three inches off his height as he reluctantly hunches his way into Talia’s seat one row up, and Peter honestly can’t mock him for it. This _is_ embarrassing.

“Peter,” Talia says. She makes herself comfortable, arranging Peter’s blanket over her knees, and then offers him his own pillow as he tries to position himself so he won’t land with a permanently compressed spine. “Peter. You honestly could go home and do your research from there, and just send us updates.”

“And deny myself the pleasure of real-time opportunities to commentate your action plan? Not my style,” Peter mutters, looking away from her. He takes the pillow and wedges it between himself and the armrest that’s determined to assault his right kidney, and then he checks the view outside. Which, this being a red-eye over some of the least-populated areas of the country, is somewhat less than interesting. “You barely saw anything that went on that night, and you never really have wanted to know what caused it.” 

His sister is still looking at him, damn her. Letting her alpha status crawl up and down his nerves till he finally huffs himself back around, only to find her with an expression that’s not quite pitying, so he can’t just be disgusted with her. No, she has to have a face as if she feels exactly the same way he does: tired, exasperated, wondering what they honestly have to do to just put things to bed. Wishing that they were not on this plane, going to where they are going.

“If we all die, you inherit everything,” Talia suddenly says.

Peter coughs hard on a breath he hadn’t even realized he was swallowing, then reaches for the bottle of water he’d tucked into the pocket in front of _his_ seat. He glares at her and she smiles at him sweetly. Oh, they’re family, all right. “With the knowledge that you will be eternally gloating from the grave about being the one to give me everything I ever wanted. I don’t see how I’m supposed to enjoy that.”

“Well, I don’t see why you’re putting yourself through this either. Like you said, you saw more,” she says, and she’s still amused but he can read past that, and he can see the hint of fear creeping up on her. “It’d be better planning if someone stayed where we knew it was safe and kept looking into things.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll start training Cora to be my research assistant right away,” Peter drawls, finishing his water. He absently pushes up the pillow to absorb her elbow, then reaches for his tablet; if he’s not going to be allowed to sleep, he might as well go back to trying to raise their odds. Then he sits back. Starts to say something, takes it back, and then shakes his head. “The _point_ was to not go back.”

Talia sucks her breath a little, but when he looks at her, her lips are pressed tightly together. She meets his eyes, then gives him a little shake. “I know,” she says.

He eventually looks away, at his tablet with the research that still needs to be done. In the row ahead of them, Derek’s heartbeat stops being so erratic as he stops eavesdropping, but doesn’t slow to the point that he would have dozed off. He might actually be doing as Peter told him. And Laura—if Laura’s absorbed anything that Peter or her mother has tried to teach her over the years, she would have gone to ground till she could get a message out. In all likelihood, she should keep till they get to her. They all know that.

“This druid. Deaton,” Peter says.

“He’s still relatively young, but he’s been in town for close to a decade. Moved in a few years after we left. I spoke to him on the phone—little cagey, like you’d expect—” Talia shares an eye-roll with Peter “—but I asked if he’d known Laura was even in the area and I think he was telling me the truth when he said no.”

Peter grimaces. He hates relying on druids for anything, but as neutrals, they can have eyes and ears where pack disputes would rule out any other firsthand witnesses. “Did you try any alphas? Isn’t Blackwood still in the region?”

“Deuc invited us over for dinner, as a matter of fact,” Talia says. She smirks when Peter raises an eyebrow, as if she’s honestly ever going to get around to ruining that fool’s Madonna/whore complex. But then her smile fades. She hesitates before going on. “When I told him why I’d be in the area, he—I think he actually implied I should just give up Laura for lost, if you can believe that. Give up on my _daughter_.”

She should sound far more outraged and far less anxious than she does. “I could answer that honestly,” Peter says, limiting himself to just a knowing look.

Talia acknowledges his restraint with a slight nod, and then abruptly slumps so that her head gently bumps his shoulder. “He’s genuinely terrified of something there, Peter. But he wouldn’t—I asked five different ways and he wouldn’t explain _why_. All he’d say was that Kali’s pack—you remember Kali?”

“Vaguely,” Peter says. Of course he knows the details of the woman Talia’s referring to, but she’d assume that to begin with. “She came to St. Louis when we were working out Laura’s college situation, didn’t she?”

“He said her pack had been destroyed there, and he thought she might have died too,” Talia says.

“Did you check with Ennis?” Peter says.

Talia tenses against him. “Yes. He hung up on me.”

“He what?” Peter says sharply. “That uppity sack of muscles—”

“I don’t think he did it to be rude, Peter. I think he did it because he did understand who I was, and what it means that I’m calling him for a favor, and he hung up on me anyway,” Talia says, dry with a ragged finish only another werewolf could have heard. Her hand sneaks up against his elbow, pauses as her gaze sweeps over the side of his face, and then unashamedly clutches at his bicep. “Whatever’s going on, it’s…”

She’s going to be maudlin, Peter thinks. In ninety-nine out of a hundred scenarios, his sister will be the alpha, and not only that, will be the alpha who throws up her hands at all of the customs and rituals that hedge in their kind, and does what is necessary to put their pack through. Outsiders might think it’s her ability to full-shift, but he knows very well it was her sheer bloody-minded focus on their survival that made him not mind when their parents finally died. In ninety-nine of them, she’s still like that.

In the hundredth, she reminds him that she’s also the alpha who stuck with certain family members even when they repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of self-preservation. Which is where he comes in. “If _I_ die in that town, I hope you realize that you’ll never find out what I did with Joanna. And if I find Laura first—”

“Oh, they’re used to you, they’ll get over it,” Talia says, snorting, as she rallies and pushes herself up. She gives his arm a last squeeze, then adjusts his pillow without asking. “Take a nap, I’ll wake you when they come around with the food.”

“Thank you, dear sister,” Peter mutters.

Talia snorts again, and then pets his shoulder as he puts his seat in horizontal mode. Still not an actual mattress, but he knows he needs the rest. If he has to go back to that damned town, he’s not about to let it catch him at any kind of disadvantage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why, yes, the timeline has shifted in numerous ways because the Hales left town, and Deucalion and Ennis both still have packs and haven't gone power-hungry insane yet.
> 
> Short chapter. Lots of action in the next, so needed a little emotional breather. Also please note the 'Slow Build' tag as I'm ignoring any complaints about Peter and Stiles not already being together. This one's going to be a long haul.


	4. Chapter 4

Based on what his uncle and mother had been whispering about, Derek assumed that their first stop in Beacon Hills would be to talk to the local druid about how to start searching for Laura. Because that’s kind of logical, which honestly should have immediately ruled it out.

“Derek, it makes absolutely no sense to show up to a veterinarian’s office with this much luggage when we’re trying not to announce to the world that we’ve returned,” Peter tells him as they park their rental SUV in the visitors’ lot of the Beacon Hills Preserve.

“Which is not where we are,” Derek points out.

Peter turns off the engine and then twists around to give him the kind of look that means he’s an idiot and not the kind of idiot Peter enjoys even laughing at, and also, whatever his sisters have just done is going to be on his head. Then, while Derek’s still trying to understand how that even works when Laura’s missing, Peter gets out of the car.

By the time Derek catches up, the other man’s opened up the back and has rummaged through the bags filling it up nearly to the point of getting them arrested—seriously, they put all the seats down and the bags are _still_ barely not-blocking the rearview mirror. “Here,” Peter says, handing him something.

Derek takes it and then looks at it: a bottle of water, wrapped round with a string of wooden beads in different colors. Some of the beads have carvings on them. “Holy water?”

“In multiple denominations, which means it takes a good two hours to prep, so try not to just leave it in a bush, would you,” Peter mutters, continuing to dig. He pulls out more beads, a small box of chalk, and a flashlight.

“It’s a preserve. I can’t anyway, that’d be illegal littering,” Derek says.

Peter looks at him again. Gets halfway through saying something, then just exhales in an annoyed way and steps back to shut the car door. He locks the car and then starts walking into the woods, heading not for the clearly-marked trail but for an area that has plenty of uncleared brush for them to crash noisily through. If they were actually trying to be sneaky.

But Derek bites down on that, and on all of his questions, because as frustrating as Peter’s being, he can tell Peter isn’t doing it just to piss him off—and that makes it more than a little frightening. Laura’s been missing for almost four days now and both Peter and Talia are taking it much more seriously than Derek had been expecting, and it’s _them_.

“I can hear you insulting me in your head,” Peter says.

“I actually wasn’t—I was just…so what are we looking for? What’s out here that you and Mom don’t want this Deaton guy to know we’re interested in?” Derek asks. Then tries not to look like it means anything when Peter actually looks impressed by him. “That’s why she’s going to the vet’s and we’re not, right?”

“She’s going because she’s the alpha and it’s only polite that she formally touch base to explain why we’re only here to get your sister, and are in no way, shape, or form interested in participating in whatever ongoing mess they have here.” Peter leads them off to the left, where the brush is thinning out into skinny, relatively closely-spaced pines, and then abruptly doglegs right. He examines a tree while Derek’s busy avoiding running into his back, then shakes his head and resumes walking to the left. “As for what we’re doing, while there is a non-zero chance we’ll run into Laura and possibly have this done before dinner, we’re not specifically looking for her out here.”

Derek hadn’t been smelling much anyway—not even strangers. This doesn’t seem like a part of the preserve that anyone really goes to. “Okay, so what are we doing?”

Another tree catches Peter’s eye, and this time it’s interesting enough for him to go up to it and feel at its bark. “You’ve really completely forgotten,” he says.

For a second Derek has no idea what he’s talking about, and then Peter grimaces at the tree and shoves off it with one hand. Just as Peter’s fingers are coming off the bark, Peter twists his wrist slightly to leave a set of scratches in the moss and Derek suddenly gets it. “I remember some of it,” he says. Then grimaces himself as Peter looks at him. “Maybe not so much that night—I was sleeping for most of it, remember? But I remember this place, a little. I think. It’s…it has changed, hasn’t it?”

As soon as the words leave Derek’s mouth, he knows how dumb it sounds. It’s been fourteen years, obviously. But weirdly, Peter doesn’t call him out on it. Instead the other man wanders up to another tree, looking for the claims that their family had once carved into the trunk.

“This is the public trail to the house,” he says. Then he snorts, looking down at the tangled undergrowth. “Well, it was. Clearly hasn’t been maintained.”

“If the house burned down and everybody’s so scared that they didn’t want to go there anymore, that makes sense,” Derek says after a few seconds, when he realizes Peter isn’t going to go on. “So you think we’ll find some clues?”

Peter lifts his chin and stares off into the distance. Then he gives himself a sharp shake and abruptly stalks forward. When Derek doesn’t immediately follow, he snarls over his shoulder and then keeps going, and it suddenly occurs to Derek that Peter might have been stalling before. It’s just…the idea of insecure Peter doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Let alone frightened Peter.

“First I want to know if all those damned photos are real,” Peter mutters under his breath. “Our old Emissary swore up and down that when he went back to check, things had settled down—not that I ever expect a druid to tell the truth but—not _that_ blatant—”

He’s going at a good clip, to the point that Derek’s got to make an effort to keep up. And somehow Peter’s not bothered by the rough ground, even though every few seconds Derek’s hopping up to make sure his shoes don’t get caught by a protruding root. When Peter gets like that, that normally means someone’s about to be smashed through a wall.

But the forest around them seems fine. Derek’s trying to keep at least one eye out, given the horror story his mother and Peter had told before they’d flown out, but he really doesn’t see anything out of place. Or smell, or hear, and he’d honestly been expecting…he doesn’t even know, an army of undead trees or something like that. Laura’s body just over the top of the hill they’re cresting. Except all he sees is trees, with a bit of fog creeping up between the trunks as the sun edges down below the treeline. There’s a dead deer somewhere around here, stinking up the air, but that’s about all for signs of violence.

“Do you think Laura realized the same thing?” Derek says, coming up to Peter. They’re getting closer, he can see the shadow of a building through the trees, and Peter’s…still got that determined set to his posture, but he’s slowing down and moving more cautiously. “That the house hadn’t really burned down?”

“No.” Peter wraps a string of beads around the flashlight as he walks. It’s an old-fashioned heavy metal one, which he then tucks under one arm so he can fiddle with the box of chalk. “We didn’t tell her about that. Or you.”

Derek makes a face, but it’s mostly reflex: he actually mostly is okay with where they live now, so he’s never been that interested in Beacon Hills. “I knew that, but Laura used to—”

“Tell ridiculous stories about it to trick you and Cora out of bothering her?” Peter says.

This time the grimace Derek makes is heartfelt.

Peter lets out an amused snort. “Well, no, we didn’t tell her either. We didn’t—your mother didn’t want you getting any ideas about going back. So we made it sound as boring as possible.”

“That’s probably why she got so interested in what that omega told her,” Derek says.

“Yes, I realize that,” Peter snaps. He sounds angry but he’s moving sideways now, using the tree trunks as cover as they ease over the last hillock. When Derek threatens to come level with him, he irritably waves Derek back, and then nearly cracks an elbow into Derek’s face as he thrusts his arm out and makes a hasty chalk-mark on one of the trees.

Derek strains his senses, but as far as he can tell, they’re still alone. And that’s definitely a house.

It’s also definitely been through a fire, grey all over with deep black char splayed over one corner like a gigantic clawed hand had grabbed it there, but it’s a lot more intact than—it’s up. It’s definitely up, and definitely _not_ burned down. The fire happened long enough ago that Derek can’t really smell it, and only gets notes of mildew, soggy wood, rot, but even from where they’re standing, the house looks sound enough that if he’d just come on it in the middle of a storm, he might opt to wait out the rain on the porch.

Except…he catches himself rolling his shoulders, and then, once he’s noticed that, a sudden wave of unease passes over him. Something’s off and he can’t put his finger on it, and that makes it even eerier. He’s a werewolf, after all—there’s not that much in the world that is strange to him.

He looks over at Peter, who’s gone silent and still, looking down at the house. Peter’s expression is…complicated. There’s a lot in it, especially considering who it is; Peter isn’t shy about his opinion but when you’re family, you realize that that’s not the same as letting you know what he’s actually feeling. But the first thing Derek thinks of when he sees that expression on Peter’s face, Derek realizes, is _fear_.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” says a strange male voice. At their _backs_.

Derek had drifted closer to Peter as they’d gazed down at their old house, close enough so that when they try to whip around, they get in each other’s way, and that’s what saves the guy from getting two fully-shifted beta werewolves leaping at his throat. By the time Peter shoulders Derek back, they’ve both scented the newcomer and realized he’s not another were.

He’s also kind of suicidal, stomping up to them with his arms waving around with a pissy expression on his face. “This is private property,” he snaps. Peter lets out a startled, incredulous noise and he spins around so hard he stumbles over his own feet a little, jutting his chin out as he faces Peter. “What?”

The man’s really young too, maybe Cora’s age. The sleeves of his ugly plaid shirt are halfway over his hands and his hair looks like he cuts it himself, with a dull butter knife. He’s skinny and pale and wait. He sneaked up on them. Derek didn’t hear him or smell him till he was literally standing in front of them.

“Yes, we’re aware of that,” Peter says, recovering. And clearly putting two and two together, going by how he smiles his murderer smile while dropping the chalk and casually flexing his hands by his hips. “Seeing as it used to be _our_ private property. And now it’s…”

The man blinks hard, then looks them up and down. “Oh, that means you’re—”

“Peter,” Peter says, still smiling. “We did meet, though I suppose you were too young to remember, Stiles.”

“An even bigger absentee asshole, I was going to say,” the man says with a snort. He shifts his weight back on his heels and it’s blatantly not a retreat. He looks them over again, absently pushing his cuffs up his arms, and Derek glimpses what he initially thinks are tattoos, intricate grey curlicues. But then Stiles moves his hands and the view is better but the lines are completely gone. It’s just bare, unmarked skin. “Worst babysitter ever, and _still_ trespassing. Just so you know. You know. If you’d thought I’d forgotten about it.”

All Derek remembers about Stiles from that night is a blurry image of a toddler that looked like pretty much every other toddler, and being glad the toddler didn’t resort to biting people the way Cora did when somebody took her seat. He definitely doesn’t remember mouthy. “Well, what, are you the owner?”

“No, but also, you’re in the middle of a crime scene investigation, or did you miss the police tape over the entrances?” Stiles demands.

“Police tape?” Peter says, frowning.

There definitely hadn’t been any police tape over the entrance they’d used, though Derek does remember seeing two police cars stopped at different points along the road that runs around the preserve. But they’d had their lights turned off so he’d just figured they were speed traps.

Stiles also doesn’t seem to expect that answer, since for a split second he looks annoyed at something or somebody who’s not them. But then he gathers himself and launches right back into yelling at them. “Okay, well, you don’t need tape to make it official, and the point is, you’re not supposed to be here. So why don’t you cut short whatever old-home-week tour you’ve got going and—”

“I wasn’t aware that plainclothes officers recruited so young,” Peter says in a measured tone, his eyes slightly narrowed. “Considering they’re usually senior personnel. And I do think I have a right to your badge number, Officer Stilinski.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Citizen’s arrest, hello?”

“Lack of a crime in progress?” Peter shoots back, mimicking Stiles’ sarcastic lilt. When Stiles cocks his head, Peter smiles. “By the way, I’m a practicing lawyer.”

“Yeah, what’s your bar number in California? If we’re gonna go that way,” Stiles says. He pushes at his sleeves again and the hang of his shirt snags near one armpit in a way that says he’s carrying some kind of weapon there. Then he pulls out a phone and makes as if he’s going to look something up on it. “Let’s look up unauthorized practice of law outside of your jurisdiction, right after I check the lunar calendar and point out it’s a day from the full moon, which really isn’t going to make your bail hearing any easier.”

Derek immediately stiffens and almost at the same time, Peter clamps a hand on his shoulder. “Of course he knows about us, Derek,” Peter says in a poisonously sweet tone. “The same way he knows just what spells to hide his approach from us. Well, for your information, we’re—”

“We’re looking for my sister, Laura. We thought she came here and she hasn’t been answering her phone,” Derek interrupts. Which wasn’t where Peter wanted to go, but where the hell they were going, aside from a lot of bickering and then maybe real cops, is beyond Derek. “That’s all we were doing here, all right? We didn’t know about a crime scene or—what happened? Did someone die? Was—it wasn’t a—”

“No, nobody died,” Stiles says, a little less angry than before. He’s still trying to will them to death with his eyes, but he no longer looks like he might follow it up with chopping them up just to make sure. “It’s not a murder, it’s just—there’s an escaped felon wandering around. Pretty dangerous guy, you really shouldn’t be here.”

“As opposed to you?” Peter says, clearly still wanting to decide who’s the snarkiest.

Derek is about to elbow him when Stiles suddenly slumps, and Derek gets a strong pulse of exhaustion in the man’s scent. “Look, my dad’s the sheriff, I’ve got the whole police force on speed-dial,” he says, moving his phone around in the air. “You two, on the other hand, look sketchy as hell and there are dogs and cops sweeping this place. You should go back to town—the station’s still in the same place, just go there and file a missing persons report. They’ll get on it once the night shift is on.”

Obviously that still doesn’t hang everything together, but when Derek checks with Peter, he finds the other man thinking it over. Peter presses his lips together, then suddenly loosens up and gives Stiles another one of his smiles. “Well, of course, we wouldn’t want to intrude on local affairs. Now, which way did we park the car…”

“Seriously?” Stiles says. He’s starting to revive, he’s so skeptical.

“Well, what’s so sketchy about us?” Derek says, automatically covering for Peter. 

“We’re in a northern California forest and you’re both dressed like it’s Rodeo Drive,” Stiles says. Pauses. “Also the holy water and the amulets and general werewolfiness.”

Derek’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, which he thinks is fine. It’s not exactly burning up under the tree cover, but it’s still summer, and so why this is the wrong thing to wear—

“We’ll be sure to consult the dress code the next time we venture out,” Peter says acidly, catching Derek by the arm and pulling him away.

“Yeah, maybe don’t?” Stiles calls after them. “You know, ‘cause cops and dogs and inconvenient places to catch a bullet, even if you heal?”

“Don’t answer him, Derek,” Peter mutters.

What Peter actually means when he uses that tone is don’t answer Peter, or interrupt whatever massacre Peter is mentally mapping out. Anyway, they do seem to be done, so Derek drops it and just watches Stiles over his shoulder as Stiles watches them right back, until they’ve backtracked over a big enough hillock that they can no longer see each other.

“We’re not going back to the car,” Peter announces at that point.

“Okay,” Derek says. He takes that as a sign that it’s safe to free his arm from Peter without having to worry about a mauling, and does so. Then he grimaces as his foot sinks into a muddy spot hidden by the thick layer of brown pine needles all over everything; if he’d remembered what a dump the woods here was, he would have packed his trash sneakers. “Take it we’re not going to the house today either.”

Peter half-jerks towards him, just enough for Derek to flinch from, and then reverts to stalking forward. “We weren’t anyway. As I told you, I just wanted to confirm that the house was—”

“Magically reappearing?” Derek says.

For a second he thinks Peter’s going to rip at him. But then the other man slows down, a thoughtful look chasing off the irritation from his face. “That’s one way to put it,” he says after a moment. “And he not only recognized us as werewolves, but also didn’t seem particularly surprised by it. Did you notice that?”

“Well, didn’t you wolf out in front of him back then?” Derek asks, frowning. “I mean—I thought…you brought him over to our house, and I remember you and Mom were so worried about whatever was going on, you weren’t…I don’t think any of us were being that careful.”

“I didn’t actually shift for him,” Peter says. He’s not nearly as condescending as he normally would be. “He could have noticed I was running much faster than a regular human, but he was also four, Derek. Our eyes might have—he might have seen that too. But still…he would’ve had to been told ‘werewolf’ and if we’d all left town…”

That is weird. And then Derek remembers and it’s not. “But you said—so if he was doing magic to keep himself hidden from werewolf senses—”

“Which means he recognized what and who we are from a distance, which just proves that—”

“And the Argents ran all through the town way back when, maybe they tried to explain why they were shooting up the woods and recruiting a man-eating tree,” Derek points out. His uncle lets out an exasperated exhale and he knows exactly why Peter’s doing that, and to forestall the lecture on what a Nemeton _actually_ is, he shifts to the part of the situation he personally finds weird. “How did you know who he was? He was two feet tall or something like that the last time we saw him.”

Peter actually lets out a disgusted groan. “Derek. Werewolf. _Smell_.”

“You babysat a four-year-old for a couple hours right before all hell broke loose and we moved across the country, and you still remember what he smells like?” Derek says, both in self-defense and because it is honestly the actual point here. “Peter. I was there too, and _I_ don’t remember.”

“Well, when you’re waiting out the statute of limitations for a possible kidnapping charge, you tend to hold onto certain memories,” Peter mutters. “Also, of course you don’t, when you were that age you noticed—”

They wheel around at the same time. The werewolf creeping up on them pauses, then lets out an embarrassed-sounding cough. “Uh, hi, sorry, I would’ve…given you a heads-up earlier, but you sounded like you were in the middle of something.” 

A few seconds later, he jogs out from the brush. He’d sounded young and that turns out to be right: he’s roughly Stiles’ age, with a sheepish smile on his face that makes him look even younger. His clothes actually come close to fitting him, showing a build that’s decent by human standards, although both Derek and Peter have him outweighed. Not that that matters, since it’s immediately clear that despite the odd mannerisms, he’s an alpha.

“Hi, I’m Scott,” the man says, holding out his hand. “Scott McCall.”

Derek looks at Peter, who stares at this Scott as if any moment now something like the chestburster from the _Aliens_ franchise is going to happen. The thing is, as the seconds tick by and they just stare at each other, Scott smells increasingly confused. That and nothing else, and okay, he is behaving strangely, but he still has his hand out and Derek and Peter could have jumped him by now.

“Are you—have you been here a while?” Derek finally asks.

“I was born here?” Scott says, blinking a few times. He finally lowers his hand, but still stands as if they’re just chatting in the woods and not as if they’re measuring each other up for strength and potential unseen packmates or other allies. Then his expression clears up. “ _Oh_. Oh, um, sorry, right. I was bitten and um, didn’t really have an alpha, and I’m still just sort of picking up the customs and things because not many werewolves come this way, and…you know, this might go better if we went for coffee. There’s a good diner about ten minutes outside of the preserve.”

“What happened to your alpha?” Peter asks sharply.

“Oh, no, they’re still alive,” Scott says, eyes widening, his hands coming up as he waves them in a vaguely reassuring way. “I didn’t kill them to get this way, it’s more like they sort of bit me and ran, and when they came back, I was…okay on my own. Anyway, I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. I just think it might be better if we leave the preserve.”

“Because of this escaped criminal?” Derek says.

Scott has no idea what Derek is talking about, that’s obvious just by looking at him. He even starts to ask where Derek heard that, when suddenly he goes stiff. Then he tries to hide his wince by nodding enthusiastically. “Yes. Yes. It’s dangerous right now, so let’s go have this talk somewhere else.”

“Is there actually an escaped criminal? Or police in the preserve?” Peter asks, picking up on it too. “You know, aside from Officer Stilinski back at our old house?”

“Wait, what? He’s still supposed to be in town!” Scott practically yelps. He starts to twist around, then stops himself. Looks at them, a flush spreading up his neck into his cheeks, and then he ducks his head and rubs at the side of it. “Okay, look, I’ll—I’ll give you a better idea of what’s going on, but we really do have to go. And yeah, there are police officers in the woods right now, and you _definitely_ can’t go to the old Hale—it’s _your_ old house?”

Peter smiles at him. “Hello. Peter Hale, at your service, and that there is Derek.”

Scott opens his mouth, then shuts it. Glances over his shoulder again, then straightens up and looks irritated—and also for the first time looks like he might put up a good fight. “Sometimes I really wish Stiles would…never mind. Look, I’m sorry, but it’s not safe there. I can tell you more about it once we’re out of here.”

“Well, since we merit such an impressive escort, lead the way,” Peter says, giving Scott an expansive sweep of one arm. As he turns, he shoots Derek a look to check that Derek is going to go along with this.

It’s all very weird, but Scott seems genuinely uninterested in just beating on them to beat on them, and in Derek’s experience, that means something really suspicious is going on. Which does fall into Peter’s wheelhouse, after all. So following his lead probably is the right thing to do, even if Derek doubts it makes a fight any less likely.

“Great!” Scott says, patently relieved. “Okay, this way. Let me just give Stiles’ dad a call and let him know since he’s not back at the station—”

“No, it was Stiles we ran into,” Derek says before he can think.

Peter glares at him, but actually, it turns out to be useful since it stops Scott dead in his tracks. He looks up sharply at Derek, then twists completely around to stare back in the direction of the house. He smells worried—he _looks_ worried, one hand clenching and unclenching.

“Okay,” he mutters after a second. He shifts back, then takes a deep breath and turns around. He…still doesn’t look like he wants a fight, but he’s definitely not as welcoming as he was a minute ago. “Okay. Never mind, let’s just go.”

“Lead the way,” Peter says, smiling. “I’m certainly looking forward to getting to know you.”

* * *

Of course, the second they actually pull into the diner parking lot, Peter orders Derek to get out and go talk to this McCall guy without making the slightest move towards following. “I need to talk to your mother,” is all Peter says. 

Scott didn’t catch a ride with them—he might have actually just run over, given that when they got here, he was already waiting on the sidewalk, and he’s looking at them from there. The diner seems popular, given how often people are going in and out, and Derek doesn’t want to attract any more attention than they already have, so he sighs and gets out of the car.

“We were supposed to meet somebody for dinner, Peter’s letting them know,” he tells Scott as he walks past the other man to the diner door.

“Oh, should we wait for him?” Scott says, staying put.

Derek shakes his head. He opens the door and moves over so Scott can go through, but Scott just looks back at Peter, who smiles as if this is a completely ordinary day and waves at them to go on without him. Personally, Derek thinks it would have been a lot more convincing if Peter had acted as annoyed as he probably is, given Scott already knows this isn’t a social call. “No, he said—he told me I could order for him. Come on.”

Scott takes a sideways step towards the door, but isn’t quite looking away from Peter. “If it’s just a quick call—”

“It’s not going to be,” Derek says. Then stiffens as Scott draws himself up. The guy’s an alpha and this is his turf, Derek reminds himself. “He’s on the phone with—with my mother. She’s worried about my sister, she’s going to want details.”

Through the windshield Peter gives Derek a sharp look, and then deliberately twists around as if he’s getting something out of the back. He actually might, but Derek knows it’s more about Peter making sure Derek can’t pick up anything from the call now that Derek’s spilled the beans.

“Oh, she’s here too?” Scott says. 

He is finally moving, and once he’s through the door, he stops for Derek to catch up before he signals the waitress that they’re taking a booth in the corner. He doesn’t sound that surprised and Derek kind of hopes Peter’s still tracking their heartbeats and realizes they weren’t really going to be able to hide Derek’s mom for that much longer anyway. “Yeah, the three of us flew in to look for her. So where is she?”

Scott winces, then looks around them. The diner’s bigger than it looks from the outside, and their table is far enough from the others that Derek doesn’t think they’ve been heard. Nobody really looks interested in them anyway. “You want to order something?”

Derek looks at him.

“I’m going to tell you what I know, I just…think it’s easier a lot of the time if you get things like being hungry out of the way first,” Scott sighs, sitting down. He rubs at the side of his face, then starts to reach for a menu. Then he realizes Derek’s still standing and takes back his hand. “Okay, if you’re not, just…can you please sit down?”

He smells tired, in the way that somebody does when they’ve been running on little sleep for a couple days. He covers it up a lot better than Stiles had, but it shows when he stops trying to look pleasant. “So have you seen her?” Derek asks as he slides into the opposite side of the booth. “Do you know if she actually came here?”

“I haven’t seen her, but I ran across her tracks in the woods,” Scott says.

“Her tracks?” Derek says sharply.

Scott’s eyes widen and he lifts his hand as if he’s going to reach over and grab Derek, who jerks back. Which drives his shin right into Scott’s foot, and he was pretty sure Scott was wearing sneakers when they walked in but it hurts a lot more than a rubber sole should.

“Sorry, just—I didn’t want you to break the table, all right?” Scott says, nodding down at where Derek had been grabbing the edge. He glances across the room, then nervously resettles himself. “We actually are trying to find somebody in the woods right now—not your sister, somebody else, and we don’t know who they’re working with and—anyway, look, I don’t know where your sister is right now but we didn’t find signs of a fight or anything like that. So I’m not saying she’s dead.”

“Well, you could’ve started with that,” Derek mutters. He takes a deep breath, then pushes himself straight again. His shin is throbbing but he’s not going to bend over and rub at it in front of a strange alpha. “When did you see these tracks? And where were they?”

“They were going out of the preserve. If she is still around here, I don’t think you’re going to find her in the woods.” Scott’s still looking across the room. 

No, actually, he’s looking out of the windows on that side. Derek bites back a curse and twists around too, but Peter and their rental car are both still in the parking lot. And nobody else is over there, except for a woman coming into the diner.

“I’ve been howling every night, it’s not as if she wouldn’t know an alpha was around,” Scott adds, sounding distracted. Derek looks back at him and he’s tensed up, one fist pressed against the table. He’s looking at the woman who just came in. “What was your sister doing here, anyway? Are you thinking about moving back?”

“No. Somebody just told her that our house is still up, and it’s not supposed to be, and I guess she thought that was weird and wanted to see for herself,” Derek says. “Where’d you see her tracks again? Were they by the house?”

“If she’d gotten that far, we’d know for sure where she is. Look, I’m sorry, I really do want to talk to you but—can you just—let me deal with this real quick,” Scott says. And then he gets up, visibly bracing himself as the woman comes towards them. “Just don’t say anything to her, I’ll make up something for you.”

That’s an odd thing to say, Derek thinks. He takes another look at the woman and then he frowns as her scent filters through the strong smell of the diner’s fryer. She’s not a werewolf, but she’s got a whiff of wolfsbane and gun oil to her. Which would immediately make him think _hunter_ , except her hesitant posture makes it clear she doesn’t think she’s going to get a warm welcome, and that that matters to her.

“Hi, Scott,” she says. Her eyes flick to Derek—it’s brief but does give the impression she took in a lot from it—and then glue themselves to Scott. “I—”

“Did Lydia tell you I was here?” Scott says. He’s harsh enough that Derek blinks hard; his chin’s up and the line of his shoulders is hard, and he looks so much closer to flat-out challenging this woman than he did at any point in the woods, with both Derek and Peter eyeing him. “Look, never—I don’t really care. I told you, we’d tell you when we knew something.”

The woman doesn’t seem that surprised by his curtness. If anything, it seems to be what she’d been waiting for, and she firms herself up against it. “And I’ve been trying to tell you, I can—if you’d just give me a minute, I could let you know some things that could help,” she says. Her eyes go to Derek again, and then she waves off to the side. “One minute. That’s all I’m asking, Scott, and then you can go back to—do you really think pulling in other packs is going to help? Did it help last time?”

“That’s not what we’re doing,” Scott says. Then he grimaces. “Anyway, you promised you were going to stay out of pack business. That was the deal. So this conversation shouldn’t even be happening.”

“Well, the last time I did that, your mom got in a car she shouldn’t have,” the woman says.

The air immediately freezes around them. At least, that’s what it feels like, looking at Scott’s face. He’s not…he’s not snarling, or even close to shifted, but Derek actually thinks he’d feel better if the man had. At least then Derek would know where all the anger he’s suddenly smelling would be going towards, and would know which way to jump. As is, he feels like he’s sitting on a trapdoor over a pit of wolfsbane-soaked stakes, surrounded by a ring of fire.

“Scott,” the woman says after a second. Her voice is shaky, and her shoulders are folding in on themselves. “Scott. I—I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. No, that wasn’t nice,” Scott says. His tone is calm and even and if he’d been Peter, Derek would expect at least ten bodies. “I think you’d better go, Allison. We’ll call you when we find him. And I’m going to call Lydia too, so stop trying to—”

“Your dad told me where to find you,” Allison says. She lurches forward a few inches, obviously desperate, and then, when Scott edges away, flinches as if he’d hit her. “I’m trying to tell you—”

And suddenly Scott’s calm breaks. He’s still not loud—his voice drops to a hiss and it’s actually worse, the way the anger in it is pitched to vibrate in the bone. “You don’t even _know_ , all right? You never have, you’ve just been—and I can’t believe you’d go to him. You know he knows even less, he’s just acting like it, just like he tried to act like he knew what he was doing with Mom and—just go away.”

Then Scott twists on his heel and abruptly drops back into the booth. Doubling over on himself, arms curled up under his chin as he presses his face into his hands and breathes heavily into them. Under his skin Derek sees the bones shift and okay, if the man is going to shift now, Derek is going to have to get involved.

A sucked inhale makes Derek look up, and he’s even pushing down on the table to get out from behind it when he realizes that Allison is walking away. She speeds up as she gets near the door, clearly not going to change her mind, and Derek sits back down.

“Sorry about that,” Scott mutters. He drags his hands up and down his face, then looks up wearily at Derek. “Anyway, what’s going on.”

“So you have a pack?” Derek asks without thinking.

It’s a stupid question and he doesn’t even need Peter there to tell him that. Scott and Stiles obviously work together, and anyway, rundown as Scott looks, he doesn’t look the way he would if he were truly on his own. Scott doesn’t seem to notice and just nods as if Derek had asked whether it’s raining out. “Yeah, kind of. I mean, you probably noticed—” he gives Derek that sheepish smile again, now tinged with bitterness “—we’re not exactly traditional.”

“Yeah, if she’s going to test you in front of a total stranger,” Derek notes.

Scott frowns at him, then makes a startled, strangled noise. “Oh, wait, no—Allison’s not one of—she’s not in it. She’s just…she wants to work with us, is all. But we’re not…are you going to be in town for long?”

“Till I find my sister,” Derek says, staring at him. “You know, because she’s _missing_. I don’t know how nontraditional you are here but that kind of thing matters.”

“I—sorry, I wasn’t trying to—there’s just a lot going on right now, I’m a little scattered, sorry,” Scott says, grimacing again. Then his voice drops a little, gets slower. He looks at the table. “No, I know, it’s—when it’s your family, you’d do anything. Look, if it helps, she can’t be in the woods.”

“How do you know? If you haven’t seen her?” Derek says.

“Well, honestly? Because if she had been, she’d be dead and then we’d know for sure where she was, because she’d be in the morgue.” When Scott looks up at Derek right then, he looks way older than he should be. He’s not weak, Derek suddenly realizes—weak would have worn out before this. He just lets people see him as he really is, and either he doesn’t realize he’s doing it or he doesn’t care. “Anyway, if you want to ask around in town, that should be safe. I’ll give you my number too. What’s going on right now should—we want to take care of it tonight, so after that I can probably help look for her.”

He reaches to the holder at the end of the table with the sugar and menus, trying to get the pen that’s tucked into it, and Derek rolls his eyes and pulls out his phone. “Just text me,” he says, holding it out so that Scott can see his number. “I’m only in town for this, we can block each other after we find Laura.”

Scott blinks, then shrugs and takes out his own phone. “Okay. I hope you find her soon. I do think she’s okay.”

“If the alternative’s the morgue, she’d better be,” Derek mutters. He hears a ping and flips his phone around to see the next text, then starts to set Scott up as a new contact. “So who rebuilt our house?”

Something clatters, and Derek looks up to see Scott yelping and grabbing his phone up from the table. “Nobody,” Scott says, looking harried. “Why would you think that?”

“Because—because somebody had to. It burned down, it’s not supposed to be there anymore. But we were just over there and there’s definitely still a house,” Derek says. “If you’ve been here all your life, shouldn’t you have noticed that?”

That’s not the problem, Scott’s face tells him. The guy honestly has no poker face whatsoever, and it’s easy to tell he’s sorting through which lie to feed to Derek.

So it’s ironic as hell when Peter ends up saving Scott by banging into the diner. “Derek, ditch the burger,” he calls. “We need to get your mother.”

“But I’m—okay, okay,” Derek grunts, getting to his feet. “Not that there even is a burg—”

Fingers clamp around his wrist. “Don’t go into the woods tonight,” Scott says, staring up at him. “Just…please. If you think there’s something there, call me first.”

Derek opens his mouth, then looks over at Peter. Who is in a hurry, but not so much that he can’t cock an eyebrow at the whole situation, even though Derek’s not even the one—never mind. He shakes Scott off and heads over to Peter, who just shakes his head and mutters, “At least one of us is enjoying himself.”

“What does Mom want?” Derek says, biting back the first through fifth things he wants to say.

“We need to go get her,” Peter says. “Because apparently, the vet is in a coma.”

“What?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek is much more understandable to me (especially his passive moments) if you remember he's the middle child in what appears to be a family of very strong personalities, and that as much as Peter criticizes Derek for lack of foresight, Peter is also totally that guy who's constantly leaving out crucial bridge information because Peter forgets he forbade everybody to read that one book with that info in it. And unlike the rest of his family, Derek sort of respects people's rules and would actually not touch the book. It sucks being the voice of reason in a family of exuberant psychos.
> 
> I may have wanted to write this series for this Stiles and Peter and Derek meeting. Not _just_ for this scene, but it was a pretty major factor. The following encounter with Scott was a big one, too. Role reversals are so much fun.
> 
> We are going with the show's never really explained thing that werewolves apparently get a little buzzy vibe whenever they're near each other, like this is _Highlander_ all of a sudden.


	5. Chapter 5

Talia does not have high expectations when she arrives at the office of one Alan Deaton, but she does at least think that Alan will be there to greet her. They’d spoken on the phone barely an hour before she and Peter and Derek had taken off for the airport, after all.

But the parking lot surrounding the building is completely empty, and moreover, _smells_ empty. The air near a working veterinarian’s office should be an absolute cacophony of small animal distress and human confusion, yet what fills her nose is simply…unlived-in. That’s the best way she can think to describe it.

It puts her on edge. The building is on a public street that’s relatively open to the center of town, no other cars are in the lot, and she still finds herself going out of her way to make sure that she has at least two clear exit routes when she walks up to the door. Which is locked, with a slightly-faded piece of paper posted to the inside glass that apologizes for being temporarily closed. There’s no number to call, or any directions to a new location, or anything like that. The lights are off and she can’t hear any sounds inside, besides the occasional soft scurry of a rodent.

Talia sends Peter a text telling him dinner plans need to be redone, but she knows he’s out in the woods with Derek where the reception may be spotty. She’s not expecting him to get back to her any time soon and moves on to calling their Emissary back in New York, only to get voicemail.

Damned man and his constant work retreats. At this point in her life, druids are necessary nuisances—far too networked to ignore, but they’re never around when you need them. And anyway, Tyler’s advice always ends up being some variation of, ‘but Talia, think about how this could set a bad example for other alphas.’ If they’re really alphas, they wouldn’t copy her. They’d sit back and wait till the dust settled so they could grab more territory, and she’s not about to help anyone do that.

Given the state of the building, Talia doubts that Alan Deaton is going to pick up, but she has no other local numbers to try. So she’s in the middle of dialing him when a passerby’s heartbeat suddenly speeds up.

Talia looks up and a woman is staring meaningfully at her from across the street. She’s about a decade younger than Talia, possibly around Peter’s age, and the combination of mountain ash and herbs in her scent screams druid. She lifts one hand, clearly wary, but she’s at least asking permission.

There is also, Talia thinks as she nods for the woman to come over, a distinct familiarity in her facial features. “I’m Alan’s sister, Marin,” the woman says when she’s close enough, confirming that. “You’re looking for him.”

“I’m supposed to be having dinner with him, at his invitation,” Talia says dryly.

Marin’s eyes widen and for a moment she appears genuinely speechless. Which is a rare enough reaction with druids that Talia’s stomach twists hard—she’d been worried about Laura, yes, but this is the first time she really thinks her daughter might not be—might actually be—

She’s not going to go down that route. Peter might grumble about the missed nuances but they’ve both done their part to ensure Talia’s children have grown up knowing when to fight and when to go to ground. Talia refuses to expect anything else from them, and no matter what’s going on with this town, that should be enough. It’s only been four days since Laura’s last communication, and Talia and Peter and their parents had lived in this town for years before that. And, Talia thinks savagely, if they managed to leave the place once with their family intact, then they can damned well do it again.

“You shouldn’t have come, Alpha Hale,” Marin says when she finally recovers. She gives herself a sharp shake and then steps up to put one hand on the door to the office. “My brother has been in the hospital for a week. He couldn’t possibly have done that.”

Talia stares at her. “My Emissary arranged—I _spoke_ to him. I personally spoke on the phone with him, for a good ten minutes, and he recommended two different tapas restaurants to me.”

“That wasn’t him,” Marin insists. “The best thing you can do right now is turn around and leave.”

“Well, I’m not doing that. For one thing, my daughter’s somewhere in this town and I need to find her,” Talia snaps.

“Your daughter is fine,” Marin says without missing a beat.

Which means Talia immediately swings around on her, then grabs the hand Marin just tried to put into a jacket-pocket. “Oh, no, no mountain ash tricks. I’m not a fool,” Talia says to her, leaning forward so that they’re nearly nose-to-nose. “You knew my daughter was here before I even mentioned it. You’re not surprised to see _me_ , even if you’re surprised to hear I spoke to your brother. Well, where is she? Where’s Laura?”

Marin smells much less confident than she appears, although she makes a decent effort at keeping her heartbeat under control. She purses her lips and Talia tightens the grip on her wrist. “Alpha Hale, listen to me. I’m trying to _help_ your—” she starts.

Then the sound of a police siren interrupts. It’s still relatively far off and the siren only whines the one time, but it immediately spooks Marin. In fact, she twists around and then gasps as Talia’s hold on her catches her up short, as if she’d forgotten Talia was there in the first place. She throws a glance down the road, then shoves into Talia, forcing them both back into the recessed doorway of the vet’s office. Then she looks again over her shoulder. The angle gives Talia her profile and Talia watches as the other woman tenses her jaw, swallows hard, and then sucks in one cheek.

“If you want to see your family again, you’ll do exactly as I say,” Marin mutters. She’s moving her shoulders back and forth in the way of someone nerving themselves up. “If someone _asks_ you to do something, stop and check that they’re really who they say they are. That’s how you’re going to survive this town.”

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, Talia starts to say, but at that point a bright light sweeps over them. It’s not that late, actually—Talia looks up at the sky to see whether a storm is brewing, then looks down as the police car pulls into the parking lot, with a familiar face at the wheel.

Something squeezes her arm. She jerks away from it, losing her grip on Marin in the process, and then looks over to catch the other woman swaying towards her. The next moment Marin’s turned around, chin up, hiding her embarrassment, but she genuinely had seemed as if she’d rather clutch at Talia than deal with the oncoming sheriff.

Frankly, Talia doesn’t want to have this meeting either, but now that she doesn’t have a choice, she’s not going to let it intimidate her. “John,” she says. “It’s been years.”

The sheriff slows a little as he walks up to them, even though he’s obviously recognized her as well. He’s aged well, Talia thinks: a little bulkier but that’s muscle, not fat, and the few wrinkles on his face tend to work with his rugged features, not against them. “Talia Hale. Didn’t know you’d moved back to town.”

“Oh, no, I was just—my daughter’s celebrating her graduate degree and was roadtripping in the area, and she was curious. We’re quite settled where we are now on the East Coast—I’ve just been elected the chairman of our community board, Peter’s on partner-track at his law firm…” Talia sensed Marin looking over at her in a disapproving way and turns a shoulder to the other woman, stepping forward and offering her hand “…it’s really just a quick sightseeing trip. Visit your roots, that sort of thing.”

“Roots. Yeah, that’s something to call it,” Stilinski says. His tone is faintly sarcastic, and with how his eyes flick to Marin, he seems to be needling her rather than Talia. Then he turns back and takes Talia’s hand and gives it a firm shake. “So that’s what Peter’s up to these days.”

Talia smiles with her teeth. “Yes. Excellent outlet for all that energy of his, and he’s very good at it. And how are you and your family? Stiles should be heading to college right about now, shouldn’t he?”

“He’s pretty close to graduating, actually. Skipped a few grades,” Stilinski tells her. He lets go of her hand and stands back, casual stance, hands not near his gunbelt.

“Oh, really? You and Claudia must be so proud,” Talia says.

She honestly means it. She’s a mother herself, and knows how a parent loves nothing more than bragging about their children, and that’s really all she’s trying to do, acknowledge that. So why _both_ Marin and Stilinski react the way they do—Marin steps off the curb to grab her shoulder, an inarticulate but urgent noise coming from the woman, while Stilinski goes terrifyingly still—is a complete surprise to her.

“Not now, Morrell,” Stilinski snaps, half out the side of his mouth, as he continues to stare at Talia. Then he makes a visible effort to try and loosen himself up. “My wife’s dead, actually.”

Well, shit, Talia thinks.

“You moved out, it’s not like you kept up, I’m guessing,” Stilinski says, turning away with a shrug. The radio in his car is crackling, something about a triple-six at the east and south exits to the preserve, and it’s obviously distracting him. He pauses for a few seconds before he goes on. “Probably didn’t want to know if we were going to try and nail you for just dumping Stiles at the station like that.”

“We didn’t just dump him,” Talia says without thinking. “And you’d better know not only is Peter a lawyer now, but we’ve—”

“Jesus Christ, I’m not going to arrest you now. I’m just pointing out that however lawyered up you people are, it was a shitty thing to do to a four-year-old.” Stilinski turns more towards his car. Then shoves around, his hand on his holster, when Marin moves slightly. He hadn’t had eyes on her at all, and she hadn’t moved loudly enough for a human to have been able to hear. “Seriously?”

“I told you what to expect,” Marin spits back at him, though she’s clearly afraid. She has her hands in her pockets.

Stilinski notices that and not only seems to know what that means, but also doesn’t seem impressed by it. “Seriously?” he says again. “Look, this really isn’t the night to test me, and whatever you’re doing with Alpha Hale—”

Talia doesn’t shift. They’re in public. But she does damn well gauge the distance between them and her rental car, and how hard she’d have to yank Marin to get the woman between herself and Stilinski’s gun. Because yes, it’s likely that Stilinski knows about werewolves now, but that he’d know Talia’s status is an entirely different level of knowledge.

“It wasn’t us,” Marin snaps at Talia, correctly guessing what Talia’s thinking. “The _last_ thing any druid wants is another werewolf pack in this town.”

“Well, excuse me for doubting that, considering how that brother of yours was always trying to get Scott aside. You don’t think that kid has enough problems?” Stilinski says to her. He’s still got his hand on his gun, and he keeps it there till Marin slowly pulls empty hands out of her pockets. And then he slides it away from his holster, fingers flexing, and they have—

By the time Talia switches to werewolf-sight, they’re gone. She lets her eyes go back to normal and the thin, complicated pattern of shiny silver lines that had covered Stilinski’s hand has disappeared. It’d looked like the tattooing that some magic-workers do, and she could’ve sworn she’d recognized symbols, but she hadn’t had a good enough look.

“All we’re trying to do is contain the situation. But we were called so late that we can only work with what’s here,” Marin says. Her voice is rising a little, and now that she’s disarmed, she’s got her arms wrapped around herself and is shivering.

The temperature has dropped sharply, and it’s unnaturally dark. The sky is cloudy but this is like—this is like they’ve skipped straight to the middle of the night. If Talia wants to make out the rest of the town beyond the circle of the police car’s headlights, she has to strain her eyes. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Just Friday in this goddamn town,” Stilinski mutters. He’s turned away from them again, staring off in the direction of the preserve. He sounds exhausted, and then he raises his hand to his temple and rubs it. Talia looks hard at his fingers and where the headlights slide over their outline, she glimpses those silver lines again. But before she can focus on them, he spins on his heel to face her. “Please get in the car.”

Talia might actually have to shift in public. Less than twenty-four hours here and this town is already reverting her to a savage. “Excuse me?”

Stilinski’s face twists and for a second she thinks he’s going to cut loose a fit of rage on her, which at least will give her something to build a police brutality case on. But then he glances to the side—to Marin, who’s backing up and swearing under her breath. Oddly, he seems to find this funny. “Oh, for God’s sake, fine. Get in the goddamn car before I _have_ to arrest you to make you do it. As if you can’t tell by now when it’s me—”

“As if you expect me to trust when the feeling’s clearly not reciprocated,” Marin mutters, stalking back up to Talia. She even goes a little past Talia before she realizes and turns around. “Alpha Hale, we need to—it’ll be safer.”

“Safer from what?” Talia says. Obviously, something’s awry, but if they think she’s going to get into the back of a police car just on this evidence, they’re stupid enough to convert her to Peter’s general feelings on humanity.

“Safer from—” Marin whips around, the whites of her eyes near-glowing in the headlight glare. “We’re out of time. Just do it or you’re never going to see your daughter.”

And dramatics aren’t going to convince Talia either. “I’m not moving till one of you explains exactly what’s the danger here,” she says. “It’s dark and cold when it shouldn’t be, but I can still hear people.”

“Those aren’t people,” Stilinski says. He’s slowly shifting towards the edge of the circle of light, his hand on his gun again.

Talia looks at him. “What are you talking about? I can hear them talking, they’re going on about their dog’s leg—”

And right then it occurs to Talia that overhearing a conversation about people taking their pet to the vet is not normal. She takes a step towards the road, where the people sound like they are, and something suddenly grabs her by the backs of her elbows. When she drops down, snarling, readying to toss them over her head and then slam them down, they drop with her and then—literally kick her ass.

It catapults her forward and she stumbles over a stone, then catches herself up against something hard and metallic. The car. She’s fallen against the side and before she can get up, someone—Marin, cursing in a shaking voice—is scrambling over the top of her. Marin’s foot bangs into her shoulder, twisting her around as she tries to find her bearings, and just as she does, her ankles are grabbed. She stabs her claws into leather and metal and looks up to find herself facing Stilinski.

“Sorry,” he says, shoving her legs into the car. He slams the door before the sound of ripping upholstery’s even faded and pivots and vanishes into the increasingly dense darkness.

Talia’s stunned. She’s an alpha werewolf and she’d just been manhandled by a druid and a…that’s where she’s stunned. “What the _hell_ did his eyes just do?”

“Quiet,” Marin hisses. From the sound of things, she’s crumpled into the foot space and that can’t be comfortable, but she makes no attempt to push herself up. “Be quiet, and remember what I said about people asking you to do things.”

Before Talia can argue, the lights go off.

It’s pitch-dark, even to werewolf-sight. The kind of darkness that feels like a living thing crawling over the world, suffocating the air in the lungs. Talia had forgotten, where she and her family now reside, that this kind of darkness could exist. Of course the East Coast has wilderness too, but not like this.

Marin is breathing hard, as hard as if she’s been running uphill. The longer the darkness stretches out, the more rested the woman should be, but instead her breathing just gets heavier. It grates on Talia’s ears and she’s gritting her teeth to not just knock out the woman. Or grab her by the throat and squeeze till Marin tells her where Laura is, what’s out there hunting the darkness, and—and _why_ Stilinski’s eyes had been that odd silver. He’s human. Had been.

What’s happened to this town, Talia thinks, and the lights go back on.

She blinks hard, half-blinded, and slowly the world as it should be fades back into view. She can see the concrete of the parking lot and the building beyond that—other buildings as well. The street. The sky—everything’s the correct light level for the time. And…and she’s let herself be tricked into this car. “Peter is never going to let me live this down,” Talia mutters.

“What?” Marin asks. 

The woman still smells as if she’s one skip away from a heart attack. Talia ignores her and tugs her legs around on the seat so she can sit up, then starts examining the edges of the thick plastic that separates the back from the front. She’s not exactly surprised to find evidence it’s been magicked to withstand supernatural beings, _but_ there’s more than one way to open a can and Peter’s discovered all of them, one way or the other. And she’s gotten him to tell him how he does it.

Anyway, this is a small town, they don’t exactly have the budget for shiny new things. She finds some wear on one of the bolts holding the plastic in place and starts working at it.

“Is your brother here with you?” Marin asks.

“No,” Talia says, using her claws to twist at the bolt till it’s loose. Once it’s out, it’s just a matter applying some leverage and then she can pop out one end. 

Marin sits up and grabs her shoulder. “What are you—it’s not over! We need to lie low till it does and then you can get your daughter and go. She’s waiting—”

Talia turns around at that, but they’re both interrupted by a knock on the window. Stilinski looks in at them, an exasperated expression on his face. “Can you not destroy my car?” he says.

“Well, you—” Talia starts, only for Marin to yank her arm again.

She looks at the other woman, who’s still and silent with beads of sweat coming up along her hairline as she stares at the man outside the car. Then Talia looks back at Stilinski, who still has that annoyed expression. “Look, I checked it out, it’s fine, so you can go now, all right?” he says. “Just stop that and open the door, okay?”

Marin grips Talia’s arm so tightly that it’d do a werewolf proud, and her fear is so palpable that Talia’s practically gagging on the scent. From what Talia’s seen so far, the woman’s reactions aren’t exactly…they don’t make sense. But this is fear, real fear, and so Talia stays put, one hand still prying at the plastic.

Stilinski’s brow creases. He stands back from the car and takes out a keyring, then fumbles with it. Then he looks up. “This isn’t funny. I need to get back on actual patrol now, and you need to get out of my car. So open the door already, would you?”

“It’s your car,” Talia says, as Marin lets out a soft moan beside her. “You’re the one who tossed me in here. You open it.”

For a second Stilinski looks at her, confused and irritated, and Talia thinks this seems mostly normal.

Then his eyes redden and his face nearly splits itself as a muzzle full of huge, rage-frothed fanged pushes out from it. He roars at her, a prime male alpha in full challenge, and his hands go up as if he’s going to punch through the windows and grab them.

Talia jerks back and the plastic barrier comes with her, popping completely out. She throws it forward, stupidly, as if—they’re not going to fight in a car. The barrier clatters against the window and she doesn’t stay to watch whether that’s followed by a grasping hand smashing in. No, she dives over into the front seat, slaps her hand against the ignition and mutters a charm, and then yanks the car into ‘drive’ before she’s even fully gotten her second leg down.

“Left!” Marin half-shrieks from the back. “Then right—right! At the light, go right!”

The car screeches down the road, Talia blindly following Marin’s instructions, for a good five minutes. She’s constantly checking in the rearview mirror for the following alpha and then Marin has her take another turn and suddenly the alpha’s not there.

Another car is, nearly broadsiding them as they speed through the intersection. Talia’s startled enough that she takes her foot of the accelerator; she puts it back on a moment later, but by then she’s taken a breath and looked outside, and noticed that there are, in fact, other cars. Buildings with lights on and people visible inside. General evidence that they’re in a town and not a nightmare…

“It’s all right. We’re far enough now, we’re through,” Marin pants. She pulls herself up and hangs over the seat, pushing at her disheveled hair with one hand. Then she gestures. “Pull in there.”

“That’s the police station,” Talia says. She’s still half-on instinct and her body continues to follow the other woman’s instruction. “And that back there—”

“That wasn’t John,” Marin says.

Talia snarls and doesn’t feel guilty at all when Marin starts and bangs her head against the top of the car. She jerks the car into the nearest available free space at the curb and then twists around. “I know it wasn’t him. That was the alpha who nearly killed me when I was pregnant with Laura. Except that alpha’s _dead_ and what the hell is going on?”

“Do you see now?” Marin gasps, like the die-hard cryptic idiot of a druid she obviously is.

“ _No_ ,” Talia snarls. “No, and if somebody doesn’t start explaining—”

“It makes your fears come true!” Marin yells at her. The woman shoves back up to Talia, smelling of terror and desperation. “It brings them back to life—your daughter went too close to the house and it must’ve seen you in her mind. So it called you back here. My brother tried to seal it off but it won and put him in the hospital, and now it wants you too. Do you understand?”

Not enough, Talia almost says. But she bites her tongue, then takes a deep breath. She knows this kind of fear, and knows Marin could just as soon pass out from hysterics as give her the rest of the missing pieces. She needs the woman to calm down enough to give her thoughtful answers. “Why would it want me?” she starts with.

Marin stares at her for a second, then half-collapses against the seat. Still gasping and Talia’s reaching for her, a little worried she’s hyperventilating, when there’s a knock at the window.

“I’m real,” says the man standing outside. Not Stilinski, though he’s also wearing a police uniform. “I’m real, I’m not going to kill you, and I have a key to the car but first I want to make sure you’re not going to charge me first.”

“Parrish,” Marin chokes. She scrabbles at the seat, then drags herself up. “Parrish, it tried at Alan’s office again, John went off—”

“I know, and Stiles is screaming my ear off and I need to get back to that mess and just come in, Tara’s got some coffee,” this Parrish says in a soothing tone. He holds up both hands to show the car keys in his hand, then is leaning down when Talia just goes ahead and opens the door.

“I know what you are. I can smell you,” Talia tells his surprised face.

Parrish takes this in stride and just backs up for her. He’s taller than Stilinski and well-built. “Okay, yeah, that’s always convenient. So I’m Jordan, and you’re Laura’s mom, right?”

Talia looks at him. 

“She’s been sleeping it off at my place—we were hoping we could get her healed up before we sent her off home, but I guess not,” Jordan says. “Anyway, if you want to come in and call your brother, you can all meet here.”

“If this is another runaround, I’m going to kill you all and leave you out in the woods for whatever is terrorizing this town,” Talia says after a long second.

Jordan grimaces. “I honestly sympathize, and it’s not. Just—this is not a good night for us, so if you could just take yourselves off our plate, we’d all really appreciate it.”

“I’ll call Peter,” Talia says after another second. And then sits back in the driver’s seat, and snorts when Jordan frowns at her. “Out here. If he picks up, then I’ll go inside with you.”

“Fair enough,” Jordan says. Then he goes around to the other side of the car. She watches but he just opens the rear door on that side and helps out Marin. Another cop comes out and Jordan hands Marin over to her, then comes back to Talia. He waits for a second, then clears his throat. His expression’s gone grim. “Are you having a problem?”

Talia takes her phone down, and only then notices that she’s gotten some texts. She checks them, then looks up. “Well, considering Peter is letting me know he and Derek will meet me at somewhere I did not tell them to meet me in fifteen minutes, and that was forty-five minutes ago—yes.”

“Fuck,” Jordan says, and goes back to the other side of the car and gets in. Then he leans over and looks at Talia’s phone. “Oh, fuck, there. Okay, I know a shortcut if you’re driving. Just do me a favor—”

“Do what you say?” Talia says.

Jordan sighs. “You’re an alpha, does that ever work? No, just try not to maul me, okay? I’m still healing from dragging your daughter out of that hellhole.”

Given that Talia’s finally found the one person in this town with some sense, she’s not going to waste time on it. She takes the keys from Jordan and starts up the car again, then peels out of there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being up on a pedestal like the show does with Talia is usually not all it's cracked up to be. She seems like an intelligent woman who handles things her way, and one of the few things the show did well is showing single moms like her and Melissa McCall in a favorable light. I think Talia's more interesting when you look behind the idealism and think about how Talia really got her reputation (because being able to full-shift is cool, but...does it really win more fights?).
> 
> Among other things that annoyed me about Morrell, she's supposedly too scared to act against Deucalion herself, but she never really acts convincingly scared. She comes off as much more as if she doesn't like _the literal torture and murder of teenagers_ but doesn't want to lose her position or prestige or something like that. And you never get any real idea what her motivations are, or anything that actually lets you relate to her on a personal level. Anyway, I've played with Deaton in a few fics, haven't really done Morrell yet.
> 
> This is going to be slow in terms of building the relationships. And long. And have several subplots going at once because the Hales think they're too good to follow the old horror movie rule about sticking together.


	6. Chapter 6

Peter really does have every intention of calling Talia, but she calls him first. It’s a short conversation, just her letting him know that she’s met up with Alan and they’re probably going to be late coming back from dinner so she’ll meet him at the preserve’s west entrance instead of the hotel, and it’s completely wrong. The moment she hangs up, he calls her back and gets only voicemail. So he texts her instead, and then he’s going to get Derek when a girl with a distinctly Argent look to her walks by the car.

She’s exiting the diner and seems upset about something, so it’d be a simple matter to get out and come up behind her and…Peter stops with one hand on the door. Then he looks over into the side-mirror.

“Seen a ghost, Hale?” Kali says, leaning against the back of the car.

The last time Peter had seen her, Kali was an alpha with a strong enough pack that she felt comfortable sending a beta to attend the same St. Louis college that Laura had. Now she looks a good five years older than Talia, despite being that many younger, and when she pushes off the car, he notices that she’s both wearing shoes and limping slightly. She also…he tilts his head.

“No, I’m not an alpha these days,” she says, a bitter smile twisting her lips. “Not that that doesn’t mean I can’t handle you.”

Peter pushes himself back in his seat and props up his phone as if he’s busy with it. He’s really judging whether the Argent girl’s wandered off far enough so that if he wants to run Kali over, he has a sufficient head start. “Contrary to popular belief, I hardly ever ask for the fight. I’d rather concentrate on finishing it.”

“I’m not here for one.” Her stare crawls over the back of his head for a few seconds, and then he hears her turn as if she’s going to leave. “I just thought that, if you and Talia have bothered to come all the way out here, you might want to know that somebody’s already claimed the place.”

“If I’m supposed to pass on the challenge,” Peter starts, rolling his eyes, because after the _twentieth_ time he handled the messenger, you’d think even the densest alpha would stop wasting the bodies.

“Said I wasn’t here for a fight, Peter. I’m just letting you know, since I’m pretty sure Scott didn’t,” Kali goes on in a calm voice. “It’s not him either, though he’s not going to like it if you pick a fight with that girl. And since we don’t have an Emissary around to handle this kind of thing—”

Peter sits up. “What happened to Deaton?” he says.

Kali pauses. “The vet?” she says, sounding surprised. “What, were you talking to him? He never had any idea what was going on and nearly got Scott in the hospital right next to him—”

“What do you mean, hospital?” Peter says sharply. “We’re having dinner with him tonight.”

“Well, that’ll be fun, seeing as he’s been in a coma for a week after breaking his skull,” Kali says after a long silence.

Snarling, Peter throws himself out of the car, only to find that she’s disappeared. Of course she has.

So he goes in and gets Derek, who brings Scott with him.

All right, to be fair, Derek doesn’t actually ask Scott to come along, but he also doesn’t so much as growl at Scott when Scott scrambles his way into the backseat of their rental. “I heard you, I didn’t realize you knew Dr. Deaton,” Scott says, buckling up while Derek’s still looking at Peter with an irritably helpless expression. “He was helping us and there was a—last week was not the best—”

“Yes, I gathered something happened, but if he’s been unconscious this entire time, who spoke to my sister?” Peter demands. “Or to Ty—to our Emissary? Neither of them are idiots so—”

“Did one of you pretend to be him?” Derek says, giving up on waiting for Peter to help him out of a jam and clambering into the backseat to glare at Scott. Intimidation’s much more in his line, and when his family is concerned, that unthinking aggression of his can have its uses. “Are you all just messing with us?”

“What, no, we’re—look, this kind of thing happens around here, that’s why we try to keep everybody out of the woods,” Scott says. “But look, we’re wasting time. When’s the last time you saw her? Your—”

“Things happen where you can’t be sure who you’re speaking to on the phone,” Peter says slowly, recalling his recent call with Talia. A sour taste starts to creep up his throat. “That’s what you’re saying?”

Derek’s still asking whether this is just some kind of sick prank, and he’s pushing himself up in a way that, if Peter had been Scott, would have had him thrown out of the car by now. Scott, on the other hand, immediately turns a shoulder to Derek’s increasingly obvious fangs and jerks up against the seatbelt to stare hard into Peter’s face. “When did you get the call?” he asks.

“Five—no, ten minutes ago,” Peter says, glancing at the clock. Then he stops himself, annoyed. He’s not normally that susceptible to the alpha rumble Scott’s now putting in his voice.

“Ten—” Scott yanks out his phone and checks something, then hisses under his breath “—where did they tell you to go?”

“Why?” Derek snaps.

“Because it’s not your mom, it’s—can you get hold of her now? It should be okay if you call her. Tell her to just go—to meet somewhere in town? They told you somewhere in the preserve, right?” Scott says. He glances up briefly, then hunches over again and tries to call somebody. It goes straight to voicemail and Scott lets out a bitten-off snarl, snapping his head to the side so he can stare out the window. “We just need to…oh, no.”

“We’re not going anywhere till you actually tell us what’s going on,” Derek says. There’s a pause, and then he clears his throat. “Peter—right, Peter?”

Peter’s looking out the window, because the car dashboard has just lighted up as if it’s hours later than it actually is. It doesn’t look as if it’s going to storm, but for some reason, the whole area has darkened.

“We need to get out of here,” Scott says in a low, urgent voice. “Just pull out of the parking lot and take a right and head towards town. If you want, I’ll drive so you can call—um, call—”

“My sister,” Peter says absently. “Derek’s mother.”

He looks at the diner just a few feet away, still with a waitress and a few patrons inside, all of them moving obliviously around. It’s continuing to get darker around them, and on top of that…there’s a sudden tingle to the air that raises all of his hackles. This isn’t right, either for humans or for werewolves. He’s not so soaked in the dark arts as people claim him to be, but he knows damn well what they feel like, and this feels like something—something that isn’t just comfortable in the dark. Not like werewolves, or vampires, or anyone else who’s adapted to live in it, but like something that has nothing to do with comfort, that has no reason to need to accommodate anything, even darkness. Like it _eats_ the dark.

“Don’t say her name,” Scott whispers. “Don’t talk about anything personal. Just…just drive towards town. It can’t reach all the way in yet.”

“What about—”

Going by Derek’s growl, Scott’s grabbed him somewhere. But when Peter looks in the rearview mirror, Derek isn’t fighting; the atmosphere’s gotten even to him and he’s twisting in his seat, sniffing so loudly that Peter almost snaps the usual reprimand that their role models aren’t bloodhounds.

“They’re already indoors, they’ll be fine so long as they don’t go out. But it’s too late, we can’t get out and go back in, so we just have to drive away from it,” Scott says quietly. “Please, just listen to me.”

Peter presses his lips together. His and Derek’s eyes meet in the mirror and Derek, predictably, has nothing to say, and the frustration in the man’s eyes is doing a terrible job of hiding how alarmed he is.

“All right,” Peter says, starting the car. He glances down to check the rear-view camera as he pulls out, then maneuvers them towards the street exit. “But don’t tell me we have to pick up your beta, too.”

Scott coughs. “What? Who?”

“Kali. We’re…oh, not friends, so this certainly isn’t a personal conversation, per your instructions,” Peter goes on in a conversational manner. Whatever this phenomenon is, Scott’s certainly acting as if it’s the type of thing that draws power from emotions, so he concentrates on feeding it only his irritation. “But we do know her, and seeing as the insurance policy on this rental only covers damage up to—”

“She’s not—we’re not—she just lives here,” Scott says, sounding oddly embarrassed, as if Kali, even as a beta, doesn’t have a sufficient reputation to enhance anyone’s standing. “She…we don’t really…mix.”

Derek mutters something under his breath, then starts tapping his claws against the window as they cruise down the road towards an intersection. “This is the Kali who you and Mom had to call an alpha—”

“Don’t talk about anything personal,” Scott says sharply. “And she’s not an alpha—okay, she was, but she’s not now. Honestly, I don’t know why she’s still here.”

“Well, you could make her leave if you really wanted to,” Peter says. “You know. As an alpha.”

Scott sighs. “Yeah, but I’m not really…I don’t want to…she’s the one who bit me, all right? So it’d be awkward if I made her leave.”

Peter honestly doesn’t know how to process that. He understands the words, and understands how they’re put together, but the meaning that he comes up with when his brain does that is complete nonsense. “She’s now a beta, and you’re an alpha, and she’s not dead,” Peter finally says. “What on earth did you do to each other?”

“Did she heal you?” Derek asks. Then he pushes towards the front so that Peter’s seat gets bumped. “You said, right, that if—”

“That’d just make them both betas, Derek, can you ever listen to the _other_ half of what I’m telling you, with the part about the actual consequences of your actions—”

“Left—no, left! Left!” Suddenly Scott’s shouting in Peter’s ear, shoving Derek over to reach around Peter and claw at the wheel. “What are you doing?”

Peter—quite justifiably—thinks he’s under attack, so he smashes his elbow up into Scott’s arm, then wrenches the wheel aside and stomps on the brakes. The car skids off the road and onto the shoulder, weaving just short of the barrier. In the backseat, Derek and Scott snarl and wrestle. Scott’s still shouting that they’re going the wrong way, but the sign at the intersection clearly pointed to the right and said ‘Beacon Hills, 5 miles’ so Peter has no idea why he’s saying otherwise. Blood’s smeared over Peter’s forehead where Scott’s claw must have caught him and he dashes it off with his hand before it can get into his eyes, then twists around to help Derek deal with Scott.

That’s when Laura runs by the back end of the car.

Peter stares for a second. Then swings around and slams open the door, just in time to see her hop over the far rail and disappear into the woods.

“No, don’t—” Scott yells at him. “Get back in!”

“Laura?” Peter calls. He takes two jogging steps towards the rail and then stops.

He can’t smell her. Or hear her heartbeat. He looks slowly around himself—it’s so dark now that it looks like the dead of night—and then takes a deep breath. Takes a step back, and then another, slow and easy, so that he can put his hand against the side of the rental. The metal is reassuringly solid.

Then he reaches into his pocket for the car keys so he can open up the back and get out some supplies, but before he can, a hand seizes his shoulder. Peter snarls and comes close enough to jamming his claws in his nephew’s belly that their tips snag on Derek’s shirt before his nose catches up with events.

“It’s me,” Derek hisses far too late. He moves back without letting go of Peter’s shoulder. “Hey, you tore my—”

“Shut up, Derek,” Peter says. He retracts his claws and twists his hand up to take hold of Derek’s wrist, then drags the other man around so that Derek’s where he can see him. “Stay here, I need to get my bag.”

“Should we get back in the car?” Derek says, not listening one bit. “What’d you see?”

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t real,” Scott says as he comes around from the other side. His voice is low and gravelly, not a hint of niceness in it, so it’s a surprise to see that he’s hardly shifted, with only his claws out. And his eyes, red and glowing.

He’s looking far more than he’s using any other sense, Peter notes. No sniffing, no cocking of the head, only turning slowly to sweep the area around them. As he twists their way, he puts one arm across his chest and grabs his arm, corkscrewing his hand around it as if the muscle there is aching. The motion pulls his sleeve up and Peter automatically looks at his wrist and forearm, expecting to see the same faint silver lines he’d noticed on Stiles. But instead he finds thick black tattooing, which definitely isn’t wavering in and out of visibility as Scott looks around.

“That your pack mark?” Derek asks, seeing it as well. “A hand?”

“What’s a pack mark?” Scott mutters under his breath, clearly being just polite and not actually paying any attention. Then he suddenly whips around as the low, steady sound of tramping boots reaches them. He stares for a second, then waves his hand at them. “They’re not hunters, just stay put. I’m going to—I’ll be back in five minutes. If I’m not, you should leave, and go left into town.”

Then Scott jogs off down the road. Derek makes a slight movement forward and Peter clamps down on him. “He said stay.”

“He’s literally going down a road in the middle of this—weird—I don’t even know what this is, this weather,” Derek says, gesturing with his free hand. “By himself. While we’re listening to what really sounds like people walking around in hunting boots in the woods, and why they’d be doing that in the middle of the—whatever time it is now—”

“Derek, do you or do you not want to die?” Peter lets go of the man, because Derek is basically grown now, even if his mind doesn’t care for it, and if he still wants to run after a near-stranger, that’s fine. That means Peter can justifiably punch him, lock him in the car, and get onto doing something useful.

Sadly, his nephew never can simplify things like that. He does stay, but only so he can hang around and look dubious as Peter opens up the back of the SUV. “Is this some kind of magic thing? Or is it wolfsbane poisoning? Is everybody in this town hallucinating?”

“Well, what did you eat back at that diner?” Peter mutters. The first thing he pulls out is the holy water, which he tucks under his arm. The chalk is next, plus an emergency pack of dried wolfsbane sachets.

“I didn’t eat anything. I’m not an idiot.” Derek scuffs nervously back and forth behind Peter. “We didn’t even really talk, Scott spent most of the time arguing with this girl who walked in. He says she’s not part of his pack either, just a wannabe, but she kind of—I guess if she hadn’t been so upset, I would’ve thought she was a scout or a spotter. She had that kind of smell.”

Given everything that’s happened so far, it takes Peter a good second to have any idea what Derek might be referencing. “Oh, her. I’m relatively sure she’s an Argent. She looks very much like the photos of Eleanor.”

“Wait, _what_?” Derek hisses. “You think—and she just walked out past you—and I thought you said they were all dead! Because that’s why we left town!”

“Derek, it’s called priorities. She obviously wasn’t actively hunting, so I was more concerned about your mother calling me and saying all right, take my time when I said I’d just finish burying the traffic cop and be right over,” Peter says. What he really thinks he needs, based on the evidence to date, are the specially-formulated candles he’s _sure_ he packed, but they’re not turning up in the bag they should be in. If his damned sister repacked his things again, like he doesn’t know perfectly well how to descent things so that the airport security dogs won’t go crazy…he sighs and pushes that bag aside and pulls over another one. “Also, Kali showed up.”

“That’s not like Mom. She knows you never tell her when you have a body,” Derek says, as if they hadn’t established minutes ago that it wasn’t her and this is a critical point.

Peter pauses for a second, hands in his bag. Then he just lets himself have this eyeroll. 

“Hey,” Derek says, voice rising as he jerks away from the car. “Hey, do you—do you hear that? That—is that Laura?”

“Derek, the local alpha literally just said to—Derek. Derek, _damn_ it,” Peter hisses, yanking himself away from the bag and turning just in time to see Derek with one hand over the roadside rail. “Derek, I don’t hear anything. I don’t hear anything and we just went over how hallucinations are the _least_ of—”

He catches up to his nephew in time to grab the man’s arm before the darkness completely envelops him, and it’s a good thing since they are at the very edge of the car’s headlights. Which is…is not right, Peter suddenly realizes. The lights should be able to filter much farther into the woods, but it’s as if the road is some sort of boundary: right where the pavement ends, the blackness comes down like a curtain, with only the faintest rustling suggestion of a forest behind it.

Peter snaps his mouth shut. Keeps good hold on Derek, whose sense finally seems to have caught up with him and who is teetering with one foot on the rail, his arm as tense as iron in Peter’s grip. He’s breathing as softly as possible. They both are, to the point that when Peter puts the water bottle cap in his mouth to twist it off, the _snick_ of the plastic seems to reverberate through his head so loudly he has to grit his teeth against it.

Derek shifts in his grip and Peter looks up, but Derek’s just watching him, tracking every movement as Peter spits the cap into his hand and then jiggles a messy half-circle of water around them, entirely on the wood-side of the rail.

The light doesn’t push any further past the rail, but Peter thinks he feels a slight lessening in the—it’s a downwards pressure on them, slight but constant, and he thinks again of a curtain, and of smothering. Then dismisses the thought and hands Derek the water bottle so that he can take out the chalk. The candles would have a more immediate impact on their ability to see, but that’d also just get rid of whatever is going on, without telling them anything about it. They don’t seem to be immediate danger so perhaps they can find out a few—

“Watch it!” Derek snaps, yanking at Peter.

Peter was already stumbling back, head coming up from where he’d been going to mark the rail, at the sharp noise. At first he thinks it’s a gunshot, but then the noise repeats itself and he realizes the cracking is coming from something else. It keeps going, volume diminishing a little at a time with every repetition, and he…

“What the _hell_.” Derek twists at Peter’s arm. Then shoves into Peter, his breath hot and frantic in Peter’s ear. “Are you seeing this? Tell me you’re seeing this.”

Suddenly, the headlights go past the rail and shine dead-on over a corpse hanging from a tree no more than three yards away. It twists slowly in a breeze that Peter isn’t feeling, so fresh that the blood hasn’t clotted and is still dripping from the severed waist. He looks back up at the head, flopped over at a gruesome angle against the rope twisted around its neck, and then sucks his breath between his teeth.

“Peter?” Derek says.

The thing is, Peter thinks, he can smell the body. He couldn’t a moment ago, but he can now, and it smells correct. And the facial features…if an Argent had been going to appear out of the past, he would have expected this one instead of an unknown and very young woman. “Just not _dead_ ,” Peter mutters.

Which is when the damned body lifts its head and opens its eyes.

Derek and he both start back at the same time, and Derek’s so close that his foot catches on Peter’s heel. Cursing, Peter swings himself away and manages to semi-catch himself against the car, but Derek goes completely down.

He’s rolling up almost at once, but then it goes dark _across the road_ and Peter can’t see him anymore. He was literally within reach, Peter already had one arm out for him, but—and suddenly men are crashing through the woods towards him, barely minutes away, and it sounds like they’re coming from all directions. Peter swears and shoves himself off the car to get Derek, only to have his palm slap painfully down on empty pavement.

Letting go of the car was a bad—was a terrible idea. When Peter twists around, he can’t see it either. He stumbles towards where he remembers it, only to trip again. This time his palms tear as he catches himself against the road, and the smell of his own blood hits his nose at the same time that he hears shouts that they see him, that they’ve got him, got the Hale boy.

The next thing Peter knows, he’s running through the woods. The brush is snatching at his legs with razor-edged fingers, and every time he turns around, a tree looms up so he has to veer off before he can see what’s behind him. Or who. It’s like—it’s—

That night, he thinks, and then something seems to snap in his head. He gasps for air, then wheels around behind the next tree he passes that’s big enough for him. It’s _not_ then, he thinks. It’s years later, and those hunters are all dead, and even if they weren’t, why he’d think to run to their _house_ —

Because he had been. He can see a little, now. Enough to recognize the landscape and he knows where in the preserve he is, and he shouldn’t be here.

“Peter,” says a voice several yards behind him.

He freezes. Then, very carefully, he puts his hand down to his jeans pocket and feels to see if he has any chalk left.

“Peter,” his dead mother says. “Peter, what are you doing out here? You should be home.”

No, he’d dropped the only piece. Peter presses his lips together, then makes a fist out of his hand so that his claws stab into the palm. At the same time he twists around so that his body hides where he’s got his bleeding hand pressed to the tree. “You’re not her,” he says.

His mother sighs exactly like she should sigh, with her arms crossed exactly like they should be. “I’m not having this,” she says, her voice roughening. “Either you go home right now or when your father—”

“Talia said I could stay out,” Peter says, hastily rethinking his tactics. His voice is rising, thinning out, despite his best efforts. He sounds like a whiny child. He’s not, he’s an adult and he can think for himself and that’s the entire reason why they’re going through this ridiculous exercise, but she just—is so _damnably_ like how his mother used to get angry at him. It’s hard to remember what he’s doing and not simply sink into that old morass of resentment and fear. “I asked her, she said it was fine.”

“Well, I’ll deal with your sister, and then your father will deal with you. Is that what you want, Peter?” his mother snarls at him. “Do you want to force us to deal with you?”

“Honestly,” Peter says, drawing out the word as he drags his fingertip around the last bend in the bloody runes he’s sketched on the trunk. “I really wanted Talia to kill you herself. I thought she’d earned it.”

His mother flattens. It’s hard to describe—she doesn’t grow transparent, but one second she’s a convincing flesh-and-blood figure, and the next she’s something like a cardboard cutout. It’s as if the absurd horror film they’re in suddenly had problems in the projection room. Peter heaves a great breath of air he hadn’t even realized he needed.

And then the thing pretending to be his mother _roars_ apart into a whirling storm of blackness, with something in the center—Peter throws his arm up across his face to block his eyes and loses his balance. He grabs frantically for the tree again, but by then the wind’s so strong it keeps him from it. Only one claw-tip snags and it immediately breaks off, a vicious little pinprick of pain that the next moment is completely overwhelmed as he’s spun back into another tree.

It _hurts_. He heard the wood splintering at his back and looks down at himself expecting to see bits of it driven through. But before he can see, the wind abruptly dies down. Without it holding him up, he immediately collapses to the ground.

Peter curls in on himself, broken bones cutting in all over his insides. Blood bubbles up out of his nose and mouth and he spits, then recoils as he sees the brush a few yards ahead of him bend away. Somebody’s pushing through it towards him. “This is _not_ my home,” he grunts.

“I need you to come with me,” the thing says in a woman’s voice. Not his mother’s voice, someone else’s—he tries to figure out if he recognizes it. “You’re coming back.”

Of all the damned places, Peter thinks. And also that he should have promised Talia he’d haunt her for dragging him back. She doesn’t really care where he puts the bodies, not so long as he had a good reason—one of her ‘good reasons’—and doesn’t get them into trouble. She’d care more about—he hears a twig snap and winces, even though he knows how much agony that’ll put him in.

All right. Talia didn’t really drag him back. Damn it. Damn it, she’s _right_ , he really is too curious for his own good and now he’s never—she’s never going to know—this is not how he wants it to end. Goddamn it.

The woman is bending over him. He can see the fringe of her long dark hair dip in front of his face, and then her fingers start to wrap around his wrist, even as he tries to tuck his hand under himself. In another moment he’ll at least see who she is, and if his ribs knit a little faster, he might be able to jerk up and try to maul her shoulder. Draw blood, or whatever’s flowing through the thing’s veins, draw at least something and he might have some cantrips left to fling—

“Peter, you never left,” the woman says. “You—”

Then she screams. It’s a hideous, hurricane scream that seems to fill the whole sky before coming down crashing on Peter’s head, and he’s positively _thrilled_ to feel unconsciousness finally coming on. Finally, someone he’s glad to entertain.

“Seriously, you asshole?” somebody’s saying as his vision fades. “What part of ‘your house is a hellhole’ do you not get?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kali's barefoot thing was a pretty stupid gimmick, I really never understood what was its point. So she could always roundhouse kick with claws out? First of all, way to not stand out to regular people. Second, just wear open-toed shoes.
> 
> Derek makes that comment once about just sleeping it off whenever he gets hurt, but then after they get Isaac back from the alphas, he implies that the skin can heal up but internal injuries need active intervention. The second one makes more sense to me since to properly repair most major injuries, you have stitch things back into place. Unless werewolf organs squirm around inside till their pieces match up again. Anyway, you'd figure werewolves would carry around little wolfsbane first-aid kits.
> 
> It's not like Derek and Peter aren't genre-savvy, but what I've been trying to get across is that the horror here is behaving in unexpected ways, even for them. Also, it is a canonical failing of Peter's that given an invitation to be sarcastic, he'll take it, even if he really should be, y'know, not letting himself be distracted so he can finish implementing his dastardly plan.


	7. Chapter 7

One second Derek’s there with Peter, and then the next Derek’s thrown under the car. He rocks backwards, curses as his head bangs into the undercarriage, and then hauls himself out and up only to find Peter gone and the sky more or less normal. 

Derek twists around and the body’s still there. Still hanging from the tree, cut in half at the waist, behaving like a dead body, and—he can hear Peter. The man’s running _away_ , for some reason—he’s already gone so far into the woods that Derek’s starting to lose his heartbeat. “Peter!” Derek yells. “Peter, wait, what are you—”

It’s dark again, like somebody flipped a switch. Derek stands there, in the dark, without his uncle and with no idea what to do, and Jesus, but now he sees why his mom and uncle hate this place.

“Derek? Well, don’t just stand there, come over here and give me a hand, would you?”

When he turns around, Peter’s standing about fifty yards up the road, with what looks like the other half of the dead man dragging behind him. This darkness is weird with how it lets in little spotlights, like they’re on some kind of theater set. It’s weird and Derek doesn’t trust it, so he stays where he is.

The fake Peter looks at him impatiently, then snorts, shakes his head, and starts to lug the corpse by one ankle towards Derek. “Useless as always, I see.”

Also, Derek thinks, he does wish he’d paid more attention to Peter’s magic stuff. There’s a whole carload of probably useful stuff next to him but even if he dove into it, he wouldn’t really know what to do with it. And it’s not like he doesn’t respect it—that’s the whole problem. It’s not really something he’s good at, and it takes him a while to understand what Peter’s trying to explain, and in the meantime he’s melted the armchair or made his mother break out the double-strength wolfsbane to fix him up. Teaching him just seems like it’s such a pain for everybody involved. But yeah, that kind of thing would be useful right about now.

After another two yards, fake Peter stops again. He twists his half a corpse by the ankle and stretches out his foot, then wrinkles up his noise in an entirely Peter way. “Yet another perfectly good pair of pants ruined. You know, if you don’t want to end up owing your entire life to me, you could at least come here and—”

“Derek! Derek! Don’t! He’s not real!” shouts Derek’s sister, and Derek barely has time to think _but she’s probably fake too_ when somebody barrels into him from behind. “Don’t go!”

“What the—” Derek growls, ducking down. He twists over, gets a mouthful of hair—wait, no, this really is Laura. That’s her goddamn fancy shampoo bar he’s tasting.

He twists back around and there’s a full-shifted alpha mid-leap at Peter, who’s—who’s halfway to transforming to something completely different when Scott’s claws take it in the face. Scott has something in his hands—beads, maybe? Derek sees something thin and red whipping around—and he slashes around with them as he literally slices the thing in half down the vertical. Granted, it doesn’t really seem to have guts, or an actual body, but it’s…it’s impressive. It is. Give credit where credit is due, okay, Derek’s not _that_ stuck keeping up his pride.

“Oh, my God, Derek,” Laura says, face smashed into Derek’s back, and right.

“Where the hell have you been?” Derek snaps, yanking himself around. “Do you know—Mom came! Her and Peter, and Peter just fucking ran off like—couldn’t you fucking call us back?”

Laura pulls back, blinking hard, and then she jerks straight. “Peter’s here?”

“Well, not now, I just said he ran off,” Derek says.

“What? Where? Where did he go?” Scott gasps, running up to them. “He can’t be in the woods, okay? There’s—oh. That’s where he went.”

“What?” Laura says, and then she turns and sees the dead man. “Oh, God, that’s horrible. Who is that?”

“Gerard Argent,” Scott says. He looks like—like yeah, this isn’t what you want to see dangling from a street-side tree in the local nature park, but the expression on his face falls well short of _what the fuck._

“Fuck this place,” Derek decides, grabbing Laura’s arm. She’s still busy enough staring at the dead guy that she lets him drag her towards the rental car. “Come on. We’re gonna get Peter, and then find Mom, and then go fucking _home_.”

Laura stumbles. “Mom?”

“Yeah, I told you, she came—they both came. You weren’t answering the phone, what’d you think was going to happen?” Derek says. He gets to the driver’s side door, which is still open, and then realizes that he doesn’t have the keys. “Okay, fucking really?”

“Derek,” Laura’s saying, tugging back on his grip. “Derek, listen, I know, but we can’t—you don’t know what’s going on here—”

“Whatever’s going on here, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know who the dead people are, I don’t want to know why I’m seeing fake people, I just want to get my _real_ family and go! Why the hell does it matter what’s going on!” Derek half-snarls, half-yells, spinning around to face her. Sometimes he understands why they annoy Peter so much. “Is it really that important when things are trying to kill us? And now Peter’s gone, goddamn it! How the hell are we supposed to explain that to—what the hell happened to your _neck_?”

It’s the first time Derek’s really looked at her head-on, and she’s got—she’s got this hand-shaped mark around her throat, just like somebody’s grabbed it. Except it’s the wrong color for a bruise, too flat and even, and anyway the flesh isn’t swollen up, just black. And it can’t be a tattoo because when Derek got his in a fit after his first serious girlfriend had dumped him for a Neo-pagan, she’d spent _months_ trying to convince him that he’d done it wrong and it’d eventually turn hot pink and he’d have to do all sorts of stupid shit to get it removed.

Actually, it looks a lot like that tattoo Derek thought he’d seen on Scott’s arm.

“Oh, that,” Laura says. She sounds dismissive but the hand that creeps up to touch her neck is shaking. “Derek. Listen. There’s a thing in our old house—”

“You can’t go into the woods now, we barely got it to go and we need to get back into town,” Scott says, pushing up to them. He’s trying to crowd them into the car, and when Derek figures that out and twists out of the way, Scott grabs Derek’s shoulder. “I’ll go look for Peter, but you need to go—”

“Like I’m going to go along with that when you lied about Laura!” Derek snaps.

“I didn’t lie! I _didn’t_ see her, I just saw the tracks, by the time I got there they told me she was fine!” Scott says. He puts pressure against Derek’s shoulder. Then just shoves when Derek resists; he does not look like he’s enjoying this, but he isn’t even breathing hard and he bangs Derek right up against the car. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

Derek hears another growl and looks up from gasping to find his sister starting to shift. “Let _go_ of my brother,” Laura says, reaching for them.

Scott grimaces, his head going down as if he’s going to give up. And then he just takes Laura by the wrist and twists her arm so that she gets slammed right up against Derek. “No. You can’t, you’ll get taken and if it got Gerard tonight we can’t let it get anyone else.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” Derek says. Beside him, Laura seems too stunned by running into an alpha who’s not intimidated by them to struggle. “ _What_ is ‘it’—”

That’s when a police siren suddenly cuts through the air. Scott looks over his shoulder and Laura coughs low in her throat, not so frozen after all. And then she and Derek charge Scott at the same time.

They don’t manage to knock him off his feet—he’s _much_ stronger than his build suggests—but they get themselves off the car. Scott jumps back rather than claw at them, then wheels around to go for—he goes for Laura first. Derek doesn’t wait for his sister to say, just dodges away and runs down the road towards the oncoming headlights. He’s probably going to get shot, he thinks, but as long as it’s not right in the head he should heal before they have to get on a plane again—

It’s hard to see anything past the headlight glare, but Derek can still hear and he definitely hears his mother’s voice. And then the car suddenly slews about like it’s _going_ to hit him and look, healing from it doesn’t mean he’s going to do it if he doesn’t have to.

So he leaps straight up into the air, hoping he can come down on the other side of the car.

He doesn’t make it because the car swerves again, putting the back end right under one of his feet. He does the best he can and twists his torso to try and grab the trunk on his way down, so that he doesn’t completely pulverize his leg on landing. But his kneecap still basically explodes, and for about five seconds or so that’s his entire world.

When he shakes it off enough to pull himself around the side of his car, his mother is slumped over in Scott’s arms, while his sister is in the middle of yelling at ‘Jordan, I thought you were the _one_ non-asshole.’ Jordan is a cop, or at least dressed like one, and Jordan is pointing a bulky-looking gun at Laura while looking as if he wishes he’d taken traffic-directing duty.

“I didn’t say I was an asshole, or not one!” he’s telling Laura. “I said I’m gonna help you stay safe and heal till you could go home, but if you’re going to pull crap that gets in the way of—”

“You shot my mom!” Laura shouts.

“It’s just a tranquilizer, she’ll wake up in fifteen minutes or so,” Scott says. He tries to give Laura a reassuring look and adjust his arms around Derek’s mother at the same time, and then has to abandon both to snarl as Laura takes a step forward. “ _No_. No, this isn’t—this isn’t going to help, okay? This isn’t going to help you, or her, or your uncle, and if you want us to find him in time—”

Jordan groans. “Jesus Christ, how many are there? And we have to do this on the same night that—”

“No, it got him, he’s over there, that’s over now,” Scott mutters. For a second he and Jordan share a grim look. Then he takes a deep breath. Heaves Derek’s mother over his shoulder and then turns to face Laura; Jordan’s making incredulous-to-resigned noises that he’s making an effort to ignore, says his twitching cheek muscle. “Listen. I’m sorry. Nobody here wants things to go this way. But Gerard over there, we’ve been trying to get him, and—”

“I would’ve gotten all the exits closed off if I hadn’t gotten dragged over because Marin’s fighting with John again. You know how much Stiles has been bitching at me for that?” Jordan says, before turning and glaring at Laura. “And I don’t even want to know how _you_ got out of my spare bedroom.”

“Well, maybe if you’d told me my family was in town, I wouldn’t have had to swipe my uncle’s tricks for blowing up runes!” Laura snaps at him.

“I didn’t know about them!” Jordan snaps back. “Nobody tells me anything either!”

Scott roars.

He really, really doesn’t look as powerful as he is, Derek thinks, as the sound slowly fades away and everybody’s instinct to crouch down wears off. Werewolves don’t judge just on appearance—Derek’s mother isn’t exactly built like a truck, and she can tangle with just about any alpha out there—but there are certain cues that usually go together, and Scott doesn’t have any of them.

“Look,” Scott says. He’s raspy, echoes of his roar still working out of his voice. “It wanted us in this spot for a reason, so we need to leave. That’s all that matters right now.”

“I just—do you really think we can just—Peter’s _family_ ,” Laura hisses. “Do you think we’re just going to leave him?”

Scott winces and Laura starts to lean towards him, but before she can make her move, his head comes back up. “Well, you don’t know where he _is_ ,” Scott says, sharply but not—not as if he’s trying to insult her. “I don’t know where he is. But what I know, I know if you wander off now, all of you are going to end up at the house.”

“We got you out of there once, but it was daytime,” Jordan adds. “It’s stronger now.

For another second Laura glowers at them, rocking from foot to foot as if she still wants to lunge. And then she jerks herself back. She lets out a frustrated noise, which Derek can’t help but echo—Laura’s head snaps around and he tries not to look so much like he needs the car to stay on his feet.

It’s not working, says the way her back slumps. “Just—will Peter still _be_ alive?” Laura asks. Her eyes flick down. “And my mom?”

“If you go back to town now, we’ll be sure about you and Derek and her, and then we can concentrate on your uncle,” Scott says. He pauses, then takes a deep breath. “I know this sounds bad, but you want to make sure of that kind of thing before you go for anyone else. Believe me, we’ve learned this the hard way. So…let us take you back. And then we’ll go back for Peter.”

“Stiles is still out there, isn’t he?” Jordan adds quietly. “We’ll call him, if he isn’t already on it. He could be.”

Derek deliberately lets his shoulder knock against the side of the police car to get their attention. Laura and Jordan look at him; Scott doesn’t, though he can tell from how the man cocks his head that he’s following Derek’s movements. “And he can kill whatever killed that guy, tried to strangle my sister and messed with me and Peter?”

“No,” Scott says. Then turns to face Derek—not completely away from Laura, but enough so that he’s once again ignoring Jordan’s disbelieving grimace. “No, but he can hold it back. More than any of the rest of us.”

“His dad’s still out too. I think trying to chase down the part that was tailing her—” Jordan nods at Derek’s mom “—but if Gerard’s here he can stop that and head out here instead. Look, guys, so we’re basically kidnapping you with your mother as leverage, but this is really the way with the best odds of survival for everybody.”

“Glad to hear you call this for what it really is,” Laura says acidly, but she’s already given in. She keeps looking at Derek, with her hands down by her hips instead of up with flexed claws.

He knows what she’s thinking—something’s been after their _mom_ too? She swallows hard and that pulls his eyes back up to that mark around her neck, which, if it’s an injury, should have healed days ago. Neither of them want to just leave, not with Peter God knows where, but…but they don’t really know what else to do. And this place is just _so fucked up._

“Is this all just something to make you feel better when you shoot us with whatever you shot my mom with? When we don’t go along with it?” Laura says after a moment. She watches the pained expressions play out over Jordan’s and Scott’s faces, then snorts. “Okay, then, fine. Let’s go. It’s something like eleven minutes till my mom wakes up and kills you all anyway.”

* * *

Actually, it’s more like thirty minutes before Derek’s mother wakes up, and by then they’ve been unloaded at a nice-looking suburban house that’s not that far from the preserve, considering what everybody keeps telling them to be wary of. This is also the Stilinski house, and Stiles’ father the sheriff is waiting for them when they arrive.

“Peter’s alive, but you can’t go see him now, the preserve will eat you,” he tells Laura. “Or you can, but then I’ll have no reason to not shoot you.”

“What the hell,” Derek says, just before Scott hustles him into a fucking kitchen. A _kitchen_.

Jordan and Laura, who’s got their mom now, follow the sheriff into the living room, while Scott drops Derek into a chair. Which is actually not that hard, considering Derek can still feel the cartilage in his knee trying to figure out where it’s supposed to be inserting itself.

“He’s just tired, he’s not usually like that,” Scott says. “He doesn’t just shoot werewolves. Do you want an icepack?”

Derek stares at him.

Scott stares back, the already-weak smile fading off his face. He hitches his shoulders, then sighs and turns around. And gets out an icepack and a roll of paper towels and a glass of water, which he sets in front of Derek. Then he goes and gets himself a glass of milk. Sits himself down at the table, drinks the milk, tears off some of the towels. He takes off his sneakers and socks, and then uses the towels to start wiping off mud that’s splashed up under the cuffs of his jeans.

There’s a groan and some mumbling and then Laura says “Mom, we had to leave Peter” and her and Derek’s mother snarls “ _what_ ” and the sheriff interrupts. Except Derek doesn’t actually hear what he has to say, because it’s like someone just yanked out the headphone jack. Magic, he guesses.

About thirty seconds later, Laura stomps into the kitchen, followed by Jordan. “They’re talking,” Laura snaps at Derek.

“They’re talking?” Scott says in a weirdly hopeful way to Jordan, who looks kind of like how Peter looks whenever an alpha who was dumb enough to pick a fight and crashed and burned asks whether they’re good now.

“Yeah. So I’m going to go see what the hell we’re going to do with Gerard’s body,” Jordan mutters, rubbing at the side of his face. “Talia tore up John’s car so I need to go back to the station and get another one, so I don’t get eaten either. I’m probably not going to get back till morning, so you want to do the honors with Allison? Because we should let her know.”

Scott looks a little like maybe he’d take dealing with the dead body in the haunted woods, but in the end he nods silently. Guilt starts to leak into Jordan’s scent, but he doesn’t take it back.

“Go bill that with your window,” Laura says under her breath. “Maybe you can say it was all part of the same assaulting-a-cop case.”

Jordan does pause in the doorway and look at Laura, who’s deliberately facing away from him. “I’ll bring your stuff over too, and then you can zing those zingers without having to worry I’m holding your energy bars hostage.”

“How can you even—our mom and _energy bars_ ,” Laura sputters, twisting around as Jordan walks off. “Can you even?”

“What the hell is in the woods and eating people?” Derek asks, because seriously, what is actually important to know right now.

“It’s not eating people, it’s—it sucks them into somewhere.” Laura stays twisted around but her back’s gone stiff. She puts up one hand to her throat, then slowly turns back, her head ducked as she stares at the table-top. “It’s like this…I don’t really think it’s part of the afterlife, but the little bit I saw, it felt…it felt dead. Like the people there, they’re just like…photos of themselves.”

Then she stops talking and pulls up both elbows onto the table, cradling her neck in her hands. Scott’s looking at her with a worried but unsurprised expression.

“I went in the middle of the day, Derek,” Laura suddenly says. “To our old house. Which isn’t even supposed to be there. It was the middle of the day and suddenly I’m—I’m somewhere _else_. And it’s dark, and there’s this…it’s not a person. It just looks like one.”

Laura hunches over, her shoulders pulling up nearly to her ears. A lot of people say Derek is the one who takes the most after their mother, but that’s just based on looks; he’s not the one who storms into things assuming that being a Hale’s enough to make everybody bow down. So seeing his sister look so…small. It just doesn’t make sense. Her going off to check out their magically reappearing house without wondering whether maybe that could be a sign of something bad, yeah, that’s Laura. But not this.

“It’s not a person,” Scott says. He hesitates before going on, obviously waiting to see if either of them will get mad at him for breaking into the conversation. “It’s a…do you know what a Nemeton is?”

Honestly, Derek’s relieved. Scott’s got Laura’s attention and she’s straightening back up, and Derek didn’t do that, but he also didn’t know _how_ and he’s not such a dick that he’s going to resent Scott for showing him up—and _is_ the kind of dick who’s just glad he doesn’t have to figure out how to make Laura feel better. He’ll own it. “Evil magical tree?”

“I…guess what he said,” Laura says, shrugging. “That’s what’s up with the house? A tree?”

“Uh, no, that—was what started it, the Nemeton getting destroyed. Because there was one, but then the night your family left town—”

“Argents and police got into a fight and the Argents tried to charge up the tree but it didn’t work,” Derek says.

Laura shoots him a _we are so talking about this later_ and Derek slouches a little and flicks his fingers at her to _this is why you should’ve fucking not gone and just called home_. Scott mostly doesn’t pick up on the byplay and nods. “Yeah, that ended up destroying the Nemeton too. Which everybody thought was it, but it turns out somebody had put this demon in the Nemeton a while ago.”

“Is that what makes it a Nemeton?” Laura asks.

“No, the Nemeton’s already an evil magical tree by itself, the demon was a whole separate thing,” Scott says. “It was more like they were using the tree as a jail.”

“So they took an evil tree and put an evil entity in it,” Laura says after a second. “That doesn’t honestly scream ‘jail’ to me.”

“It’s more about the relative power for binding and I’m…kind of not the best person to explain that part,” Scott says, making some vague embarrassed motions with his hands. “When this all calms down, we can get Stiles or maybe Lydia to explain this to you.”

Laura presses her lips together. “But Jordan told me it’s centered around the house, so if this demon broke free from the tree when it was destroyed, why is it still stuck here? And why in our old house? Because I think I would’ve remembered an evil tree being nearby, and I don’t.”

“No, the Nemeton was pretty close to the opposite side of the preserve from your house,” Scott says. He hesitates again, and this time it seems less about him not knowing how to say what he wants to, and more about him not wanting to. “It’s not exactly the same demon that broke out. What happened was it was really weak, when it first came out, so it couldn’t leave here, or really do anything. We think it ended up at your house because you’d left a lot of your things there, and even after it’d burned down, it didn’t really get cleaned up. So there was…magic residue, kind of, and it needed the power. We think.”

He’s not using an accusing tone but Derek can tell from how Laura shifts that she thinks Scott’s blaming them. And what Scott’s saying would explain why everybody besides Scott has been unfriendly. “Well, were we supposed to come back and fix it when we thought people were trying to kill us, and actually, we were right?” Derek asks.

Scott looks startled. “What? No, nobody thought—we all thought you were never coming back. Otherwise they definitely wouldn’t have gone out and tried to exorcise the place.”

“‘They’?” Laura says.

“Stiles’ dad, a couple other people who survived the Argent fight and knew the supernatural was real. This was…six years after you left,” Scott says. “A lot of murders and other things kept happening near the house, and they finally figured out it was a demon.”

Then he stops talking. Derek glances at Laura, who’s uncharacteristically not jumping up to keep things going. “So the exorcism didn’t work?”

“It kind of…not, but kind of did. It’s not the same demon that came out of the tree, but…it’s not really demonic either, because regular things like holy water don’t work.” Scott grimaces and pushes himself up in his chair, then immediately slumps again. “I’m really not good at explaining—Stiles likes to call it a mash-up. Like a demon and a ghost and—and whatever you call what a Nemeton leaves behind, when it dies but it’s really mad about it.”

“Okay,” Laura finally says. “Okay, so actually, it sounds like the exorcism made things worse.”

“Yeah,” Scott says after a long pause. Very softly, his eyes drifting towards the doorway to the living room. “They were just trying…someone had just died, and they were in a hurry, and got together who they could to do it…the best they could do was tie it to your house, but it just keeps getting stronger. It’s what’s been bringing the house back. I’m sorry, I really am.”

In hindsight, Derek thinks, he could’ve lived his life just fine not knowing that.

* * *

After Scott breaks it down for them, there’s not really much else to talk about. Laura eventually bugs Derek into eating a snack with her, while Scott finishes cleaning himself up and then putters around the kitchen, washing their dishes and absently doing other chores. He doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave. He also doesn’t seem like he’s doing this just to keep an eye on them either; he moves around like this is his usual go-to when they’re stuck inside waiting for the homicidal entity in the woods to calm down.

Then their mother comes in. Scott reads her expression and politely excuses himself to the hall, where Stiles’ dad comes up to him and then the two of them walk off. Derek could be going crazy—and given the day so far, he doesn’t think that that’s much of a stretch—but he’s pretty sure Scott is telling Stiles’ dad that the dish detergent’s almost run out and same for the paper towels.

“I’ll be staying to get Peter,” Derek’s mom says. Her expression says sit down and listen and then immediately follow instructions, and while she’s never been the kind of parent to make Derek afraid of her, when she looks like that, he definitely doesn’t want to be around to see what she does. “You two are booked on a flight that leaves tomorrow at seven. Make sure Cora goes to her summer classes and have Tyler look at your neck, Laura.”

“Seven means we have to leave here at three,” Laura says.

Their mother had already turned halfway back to the doorway and when she stops, Laura stutters and then ducks her head. “John said he’d arrange for someone to give you a ride,” is all she says. She looks from Laura to Derek, and then softens slightly. “I don’t think Peter or I will be here that much longer, but I want to make sure you two are all right.”

“We’ll go home,” Derek says. Then he glances at Laura, but she doesn’t look like she’s going to disagree with him. Or, for that matter, lie and just run off when he’s in the restroom, because sometimes she is way more like Peter than she wants to admit. “We’ll go, we’ll text when we’re at the airport. Just…”

“You want anything else?” Laura asks.

“Just…be safe.” For a second their mother closes her eyes and looks as if she’d honestly rather go lie down. But then she opens them, and gives herself a little shake, and glowers at the fridge so hard that Derek’s surprised it doesn’t crack. “Well, and I suppose let Tyler know when we _are_ back, I want to speak to him.”

She turns the rest of the way around and leaves. Laura spits out a breath as if she wants to curse but isn’t quite sure their mother isn’t still listening. She pulls herself up, then kicks out her feet.

“Well, guess we’re gonna be in the market for another Emissary,” she mutters.

Derek doesn’t know what to say to that, and also he doesn’t really want to answer that. He picks at what’s left of his food and Laura throws him an irritable look. But then she sighs and pulls herself around to face him.

“I’d complain about where are we supposed to sleep, except at this point, it’s not really worth trying, is it,” she says, nodding at the clock on the microwave. “I don’t really want to talk to them anyway.”

“You don’t even want to ask if that Jordan guy’s gonna come back with your stuff in time?” Derek asks.

“They’re fucking energy bars, Derek,” Laura says. “He can keep them to pay for the bedroom I smashed up, for all I care.

It’s a little snappy, even for her and taking into account everything else. She seems to get it and grimaces, looking away from him, and that’s even more suspicious. But maybe Derek’s just being paranoid, seeing as there’s a not-demon demon running around imitating people, and…it’s not paranoia if it’s true and Derek just doesn’t. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore. Which yeah, will probably get him killed someday, just like Peter always warns him about, but he’s just—he’s just tired. This is all such a clusterfuck and he can’t do anything about it and he hates just waiting around even when people’s lives don’t depend on it.

He's tired because if he tries to not be tired, he thinks he’ll go insane from how fucking helpless they are right now.

Laura eventually puts her head down on the table. Her heartbeat slows, but never quite enough that he thinks she’s sleeping. He doesn’t copy her, but he does put his head back against the top of the chair and he must doze a little, since the next thing he knows, he’s jerking up and banging his knee against the underside of the table. Same knee he broke against the police car—werewolf healing is great, don’t get him wrong, but it’s not as instantaneous as people think. It just looks like it from the outside, but soft-tissue damage like cartilage takes a while to go back to normal.

Somebody’s coming in, he thinks after a second, and turns around as the back door to the kitchen inches open. He starts to frown at that, putting his hand against the table, and someone hisses, “listen, please hear me out before you yell.”

Derek stiffens. Then glances at Laura. She’s still got her head down on her arm but it’s twisted so that he can see her eyes are slitted. And red—she’s been watching the door for a while. Without waking him. She flips her fingers at him to tell him to shut up, still watching the door.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Allison mutters from the other side of the door. “And they probably told you by now whose granddaughter I am.”

“He’s dead,” Laura says. Then winces a little, because even she isn’t a complete asshole. “If they—”

“No, they told me, that’s why I’m here,” Allison says, volume dropping, words bunching up against each other, heartbeat slow and determined as her tone is urgent. “Because I—I know, and they probably didn’t say. Gerard’s dead because he was here the night of the—the night you left town, and he was the only one in my family who got away, and there’s a reason why it wanted him back. There’s a reason why it killed him, and it’s the same reason why it’s now after your family.”

Laura snorts. “So what, you’re gonna tell us as soon as we come out with you and go somewhere alone? Hunter girl?”

“I’m not hunting you. I’m telling you that they weren’t able to get you out of the house because they’re stronger than it. They got to do that because it _let_ them, for the same reason it let my grandfather go when this first started,” Allison says.

She doesn’t say anything else. Derek’s distracted by the fact that Laura’s gone white in the face and it takes a second for him to realize that Allison’s heartbeat is retreating—that she’s actually walking _away_.

All the things—all the illusions they’ve seen have all tried to get them to come over, and Allison’s doing the exact opposite, and—and Derek’s not an idiot. He can see what she’s really saying, that Laura wasn’t the main target, and he remembers how it wasn’t him but Peter who ran off into the woods like all the hunters in the world were after him. And it’s probably still a stupid idea but he’s halfway out of his seat and lunging for the door before he catches himself. Even then, he’s bouncing on his toes to keep from going the rest of the way.

“Derek,” Laura says. She snorts when he starts, then stumbles off-balance and has to catch himself against the table. “Derek, I’ll make something up.”

“What?” Derek says. Then he gestures at the other doorway. “Mom—”

“I know, and I get it, but she went out when you were asleep—shut up, you were—and the more I think about this, the more I think it’s her and Peter,” Laura says. She pales again, and has to make an effort to go on. “I saw—in the house—I think it’s them. I think it’s them. And Derek—Derek, we can’t. You know how they are, they’re going to try, and they can’t. I’ve seen it and they can’t. We can’t let them.”

Derek swallows hard. Then…doesn’t think about it. Allison’s human, and a hunter on top of that—he knows how to deal with that. He _can_ deal with that. “Okay. So they won’t. And you tell Mom.”

“Just don’t make me look bad for this,” Laura hisses after him as he hurries out the door. “It’s not a freebie, Derek.”

“I’ll buy you more energy bars,” he mutters back.

His sister snickers. That’s the last he hears of her, and it’s strained as hell but at least it’s her. And then…and then he’s there with Allison, who’s turning around just so that she can point to a car parked down the road. “Come on,” she says. “I found what my grandfather was looking for when he came back here. It’ll tell you everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek isn't unintelligent, I just think he's far more comfortable with physical action and even if you're a thinking fighter, sheer momentum can make it hard to actualize your conclusions in time.
> 
> Ugh, no Paige here. Derek still had his first love but it went wrong for normal teenager reasons and not because we need to give Derek the most horrible backstory possible.
> 
> Whether she thought she was meeting newly-healed Peter or going back to investigate a possible vendetta, Laura could have rethought not telling Derek anything before she left. You could read it as overly protective or you could read it as flaky and immature. Or both. Anyway, it's yet another example of how the show talks up the strength of pack bonds but constantly demonstrates that all werewolves are messed-up loners.


	8. Chapter 8

“It’s fine, we kept him from getting to the house,” John says, as if that’s really a convincing argument for Talia to not kill the man the moment she’s aware of where she is. 

A better argument is what John does next, which is to raise his right hand and wave it a little and make the far wall of the living room dissolve to show the woods. It’s an illusion, and Talia’s seen complicated magic before, but—it’s the _smell_ , she thinks. Fresh blood, plenty of it, and none of it belongs to Peter.

Smell is hard to get right. The eyes are easy to fool, the ears not much more difficult. But smell…smell is hard. A scent is constantly evolving, top notes becoming low notes and low notes souring out and new notes intruding out of nowhere. Few people even realize the complexity of all the changes that their nose picks up, let alone can replicate it with sufficient sophistication to not immediately strike one as just _wrong_.

It smells right, Talia thinks, and that is what holds her on the couch, watching, as the dark figure glides out from the trees and comes up to the half-rotted back steps of her old family home. She doesn’t see much of them—she thinks their outline wavers so much in the shadows that it’s not only indistinct, but is actually becoming a shadow at points. But what is clear, at least in the illusion, is the half a corpse it’s dragging. 

“Gerard Argent,” John says. “The legs, anyway. If he hadn’t been running around tonight, we probably couldn’t have kept it off your brother. But it took Argent instead, and it’s not strong enough yet to do that much in the same night. It should quiet down for a few days. At least so long as none of you are stupid enough to go out to the house.”

Then he lowers his hand, and the wall is back in place. No shimmer or anything like that, it’s just there again. The blood-scent is still in the air.

“ _Mom_.” Something closes around Talia’s arm and her eldest daughter’s voice is suddenly in her ear, shaky with anger and fear. “Mom, I saw that—that’s just like when _I_ was—what’s he doing—”

Talia immediately turns enough to wrap her arm around Laura and hugs her tight, and her daughter crumples into her shoulder, letting out a low, relieved whine that usually only the very young make. She hums reassuringly to Laura, taking in the scent and heartbeat of her _living_ girl, and keeps looking at John Stilinski’s hand. The silvery lines are back and they stretch out from under his sleeve down over the back of his hand to the fingertips. When she looks up, she glimpses more of them retreating down his neck beneath his collar—she glances at his hand again and the skin is clean.

“We should talk about what’s living in your house now,” John says. “It almost got her too—she had one arm inside one of those first-floor windows when Jordan hauled her out.”

He is unnervingly calm. He even sounds tired, with the touch of impatience that someone gets when this is the last thing between them and a bed, and for a second rage flares up in Talia. This is her _family_ he’s treating as just the last nuisance call of the shift. Her blood.

Blood. That smell—she gets hold of herself, and lets the rage go cold and hard, and really thinks. Her daughter’s here, her son’s a room away, and her brother isn’t. That’s not going to do, not at all. 

“All right, Laura,” Talia says. She gives her daughter one last pat on the back, then carefully but firmly pushes her off. “I need to talk to John here, so go sit with Derek and make sure he doesn’t pick a fight with someone.”

Laura rears back and stares at her. “Mom, are you serious—”

“ _Go_ ,” Talia says.

After another second, her daughter does. Flipping her hair unnecessarily as she does, nearly taking out a chunk of doorway with her shoulder as she storms through it. She’ll be fine and she’ll make sure Derek stays fine.

“I put up something so that we can’t be overheard,” John tells her, moving around on the coffee table he’s using for a seat. He grimaces as his knee pops, then starts to pull off his gunbelt. “Your brother should be out of the preserve by now, but he’s on the other side and you can’t cut through it till dawn, and if you go around, you’d have to swing so far you might as well wait for morning. So the thing in your—”

“You didn’t have a bit of magic when I knew you.” Talia pushes herself straight on the couch. Her clothing’s a bit rucked about, nothing damaged, but she has a feeling some of the buttons on her shirt are going to need reinforcing. She tidies herself up as best she can. “And I know enough to know what you just did, you couldn’t have just taught yourself that. You couldn’t have pulled that off unless you’ve—unless you’ve been fundamentally changed.”

For some reason, this makes John crack a grim smile at her. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”

They look at each other for a few seconds. Talia uses the time to pull her hair back and then crush her bracelet around the resulting ponytail to hold it in place. She’s going to have to figure out where these people have put all the luggage; Peter will throw a fit if he doesn’t come back to clean clothes.

Then Talia bites the inside of her cheek. She is not going to worry about her brother like that. Not because she actually trusts John, or anyone else in this town, but because she does trust Peter. He can handle himself, and in a mess like this, which doesn’t match up to _anything_ she’s ever heard of, she’d bet on him before anyone else in the world to come out on top of things. Honestly, this is the kind of insanity that absolutely fascinates him. He’s probably—no, Talia thinks, she’s not going there either. Delusional optimism doesn’t make good planning either.

“It’s kind of a demon,” John says abruptly. “It started out as one, anyway.”

“If it was a demon, people would be more useful to it alive than dead,” Talia points out. “We did do research before we came back and there have been far too many deaths.”

John blinks hard. “You looked up what’s happened and you still came back?”

“Well, my _daughter_ was here,” Talia snaps. “And if she was alive and you knew that all along, why the hell didn’t you just let her call us?”

“Because she was almost inside the house and you can’t trust the damn phones when that happens. Look, don’t you know that now? Marin was telling Tara that’s what you told her, that you thought Alan had called you, and your brother fell for the same trick,” John says, his surprise shading straight into irritation.

“Because being able to figure out one rule based on almost being killed means I automatically know all the others?” Talia says.

John’s going to serve her in kind, says the way he pulls back. But then he hesitates and the exhaustion comes back, greys out the annoyance. He sighs and slumps a little and runs one hand back through his hair. “I’m too used to this, and the new people usually don’t stay alive long enough to have to…okay, it can mimic people’s voices and the way they look. Usually it’s just what you see and it’s not in the phones all the time but at night it’s stronger. And right after it’s killed somebody, or right after it’s taken a trip through your head—that’s how it’s a good mimic, it takes your memories. It doesn’t actually have to have you to do that, it’s kind of telepathic, when it’s close enough.”

“Thank you,” Talia says, because it is useful information and he doesn’t have to tell her. And then, when he looks up in surprise, she leans forward. “Why are you immune?”

He goes still except for a slight clench of the jaw, but it’s a sign of impending aggression, not intimidation. He’s sizing her up in light of the fact that yes, even in the middle of all the chaos, with the health and safety of her family weighing her down, she’d paid enough attention to remember he’d walked right into the illusion when Marin had done her best to go to ground. And had thought an alpha of Talia’s age and reputation would be safer doing the same. Even Peter, who’s more of a druid skeptic than Talia is, acknowledges that druids are well-trained in magic.

“I’m not really immune,” John says after a long silence. “It just can’t fool me, that’s all.”

“Well, isn’t that all of its power?” Talia says.

And then that weary, dark humor is back. “No, not really,” John says, lips curling back from his teeth in a way that, in a werewolf, would signal contempt. “It’s also strong enough to rip apart a beta with its bare hands. Didn’t you run across what happened to the Kali pack, when you were looking this place up?”

Talia twists her lips to keep from snarling at him. She’d meant to follow up on that after they’d had dinner with Deaton; like any smart alpha, she keeps tabs on her possible rivals, but the East Coast is sufficiently far away that she didn’t think she had to keep caring about their family’s old competitors. She’d thought, anyway.

“We almost had to break into the university and figure out DNA sequencing before my son found a spell that’d match up all the body parts,” John says, correctly guessing the reason for her silence. “And what happened to her Emissary was even worse. Wasn’t even a body.”

“If the point of this is to intimidate me,” Talia says after a moment, drawing out each word. “My point is I’m not leaving this town without all of my family.”

“I got that point,” John says irritably. He starts to get up—he’s not even reaching for his gun, she notes, just keeps his hands out in front—and then changes his mind and sits back down on the table. Tries to stare her into giving way to his fatigue instead. “Look, nobody here is interested in keeping you here. That thing in your house, it seems to want at least one of you, and that means I want you out of town. All of you.”

Talia shrugs. “So give me my brother back.”

“I just told you—” John starts, his voice rising sharply. Then he stops again. Looks at her, weighs up things, and then that annoyed smile cracks through again. “You think we’re just hiding the goddamn ball. Some monster that we just can’t put down, and we’re being a pain in your ass because we don’t know what we’re doing. Jesus Christ, if I had a dollar for every alpha who came to town thinking that…fine, you want to get to your brother faster?”

It’s on the tip of Talia’s tongue to protest the man’s description of her—she understands where it’s coming from, if the man’s met Kali. But she isn’t Kali, or like any of the other first-generation alphas John’s likely to have met. She knows there are things in the dark that even werewolves run from, that nobody can kill—where the best you can do is just hold it at bay till you’ve died and your children are grown enough to take over. Her family’s taught her that.

But she doesn’t say that. It’d be a waste of time. She has one goal—she’s always only had one goal, really. The night they’d been driven from town—that could have turned out differently. A lot of alphas would have chosen differently, would have taken territory over pack.

A lot of alphas are stupid, and Talia’s always had luck taking advantage of that in the past. So she lets her own irritation show, and lets John have his misconceptions about it. “If you want us out of here faster,” she shrugs.

John presses his lips together and studies her a little longer. He still doesn’t have the mannerisms of someone used to the supernatural. That magic he’d used to show her the preserve and her old house, it’d flowed from him as effortlessly as breathing, and still he lets her smell the uncertainty lacing his exasperation, lets her hear the way his heartbeat speeds up and then steadies as he comes to a decision.

“All right,” he says. “Then you can take a trip with me to the morgue, and help with Gerard Argent’s body. Sooner we get that settled, sooner things will settle down again.”

“Fantastic,” Talia says. When he shoots her an incredulous look, she smiles back. “It’s been so long, and I am here, after all. Might as well visit all the old haunts.”

After a second, John gets up, shaking his head. His joints pop and groan as if he’s not bothering to use any of that magic to ease the effects of aging. “Jesus, alphas. Well, come on, then. Not like this is getting any easier, just sitting around.”

* * *

Before she and John leave, Talia ducks into the kitchen to see to her children. They’re both on edge, and Laura in particular seems eager to turn whatever’s happened to her in the past few days into a stupidly belligerent attitude, but ultimately, they seem to understand it’s better to do what their mother says.

They’d better, Talia thinks as she rejoins John by the front door of the house where he’s giving Alpha McCall a few last instructions. She just doesn’t have the time right now. Not to worry about them and what they might be doing or thinking, about that disturbing imprint of a hand around Laura’s throat, about the way Derek keeps twitching whenever there’s a sound outside. If she lets any of that have even the slightest inch in her head, she knows she’ll just cave to her instincts and drag them into the basement, and that’s not what’s going to get them all out of this town alive. 

Sometimes, Talia thinks tiredly, being alpha means being the one who doesn’t get to just play wolf. “Well?”

Alpha McCall had been glancing over as she came up, and now he flinches and ducks his head, making as if to move away from them and towards the stairs to the second floor. It’s very…human, the way he does it. He doesn’t smell intimidated, just embarrassed. As if he’s just worried about being rude, and hasn’t given a single speck of thought to their relative standing.

“Wait a second,” John says. Gives Talia a look as if he’d like to send her back out of the hall, and then he deliberately turns his back on her, taking Alpha McCall by the arm. He’s the one who knows how to act like a werewolf, however much they seem to annoy him. “Look, Scott, you know that spare’s pretty much yours and you’ve been up all night.”

“No, it’s okay,” Scott demurs. “I’m probably not going to go to bed yet anyway. Stiles says he can’t make it back tonight either, so since I’m here—”

John’s scent turns into an odd mix of affection, irritation, and an anger that is entirely directed away from Scott. “Stiles can do whatever it is when he does get in,” he says. “You should get some sleep.”

His tone is far sharper than it really should be, and Scott glances over Talia, obviously embarrassed. “I’m fine,” he mutters, before taking a deep breath. “And if it’s about Dad, I already told him, he shouldn’t be bothering you. So if you run into anything—”

“Well, if I do, I’ll deal with it, so don’t stay up for it,” John snorts, turning away. His eyes pause on Talia, then keep on moving to the door.

She allows him to let her out of the house and walk her to the car, which isn’t a police car but a nondescript silver midsize. There is a police siren in the backseat, and also a plain Army-surplus jacket that John retrieves and then throws over his uniform.

“Our car budget isn’t that generous,” John says as he gets behind the wheel. “If you tear up this one, it’s about due for scrap anyway.”

Talia hums thoughtfully as she gets into shotgun. He’s eyeing her, waiting for it, and if he’s going to do that, she sees no reason to be in a hurry. She lets him navigate out of the neighborhood and onto the county road that will take them to the hospital first.

“Cora does that sometimes, when she’s feeling as if she needs to demonstrate how much she’s a teenager now, and not a child,” she says. “You know. Pretending she doesn’t need to do what she’s been told to.”

They pass through an intersection. “I don’t really want to make small talk, so if you’re going to ask, ask,” John sighs.

“I wasn’t asking anything, I was just pointing out that teenagers are pretty alike the world over,” Talia says in a mild tone. “Given we both seem to have a handful of them to deal with.”

John glances at her and she thinks he might—no, he rolls his eyes instead, anger dropping under fatigue in his scent. “Scott and his dad don’t get along,” he says. “His dad wasn’t in town when Scott got bit—been divorced for years and the asshole took an out-of-state job transfer to get away from it. Then came back and found out about all this.”

Scott hadn’t been the teenager Talia had been needling at and they both know it. But there is an art to needling, and part of it is to not stick in all the pins at once; that’s the part Peter still hasn’t quite mastered, impatient as he can be. “Generally it’s doing well if they don’t want to murder their child.”

“Well, we went through that phase for a couple days,” John mutters. “Rafael’s an asshole.”

Talia doesn’t really remember the McCalls, except for a vague recollection of a young woman with curly hair in scrubs. “Was Melissa any better?”

The car lurches sharply forward, then again as John jerks his foot from accelerator to brake. It’s still early hours, so there’s no one around to hit, but they do storm that intersection at a dangerous speed. Then, as Talia’s watching him with one eye to the curb outside if she needs to dive out, John takes a deep breath and gets himself under control.

“Melissa McCall was a fantastic person, and the best mother I’ve ever seen,” John says in a tightly-controlled tone. “She loved Scott.”

The past tense hangs in the air between them. They’re nearly to the hospital now and Talia…she’d like to say something to break the tension, but she’s wary now. And, to be honest, uncertain. She hadn’t known, and she doesn’t think anyone could fault her for that, but at the same time, she doesn’t consider herself to be particularly sadistic. She’s as capable of cruelty as anyone, and probably more than some, but she always likes to think she has a point for doing it. She just—

She just doesn’t know this town anymore. And that lack of knowledge is turning more and more into fear.

John pulls into the parking lot and stops the car, then sits still with his hands on the wheel for a few seconds. Then he abruptly turns towards Talia. “It killed her. It got her to come out when she shouldn’t have, right when we were realizing it could get out of the preserve on some nights. Scott got to her just as she was dying—he would’ve gotten to her in time, except his asshole father wouldn’t listen—wouldn’t believe anybody about this stuff, even though he’d seen a goddamn werewolf by then.”

Talia swallows down her immediate reaction. Sympathy right now would be needless cruelty, judging from John’s expression.

They get out of the car and John silently gestures the way to the morgue. Same back door but not the same floor, once they get in. The morgue’s down one and is at least twice the size that Talia remembers.

“It sounded like Rafael is here now?” she finally asks.

“Yeah, he moved back and got custody of Scott, for all the…he thinks it’ll make up for back then,” John mutters, clearly not thinking much of it. “I think the only reason why Scott doesn’t just get himself emancipated is he thinks this way he can keep his father out of our hair. Kid should just let the adults deal with it.”

“Is Rafael still with the FBI?” Talia says, remembering something else about the McCalls.

John shakes his head. Then pauses with his hand on the handle of one of the body drawers, blinking in surprise at her. “What? No, look—look, nobody tries to handle this town except for us. Even hunters steer clear of this place. And the only reason why Gerard came back when he broke out of prison was because that damn thing in your house wanted him to.”

“It’s not actually—” _our house now_ , Talia starts to point out.

But before she can finish, John yanks open the drawer and the words die in her mouth. She…she just doesn’t know, she realizes, staring down. She just doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always assumed that the Hales must be weirdos in the werewolf world, not just because of the full-shifting but also because they appear to be hereditary rather than turned via bites. Taking that and then pushing it a bit farther, Talia would stand out from other alphas just by sheer virtue of getting to be taught how to be one, since everybody else basically gets to learn in the middle of trying not to die. Bitten alphas also would have motivation to just look at the short-term, since they have to build a pack from scratch, which would explain a lot of the seemingly unnecessary aggression.
> 
> If John's known about werewolves and the supernatural for fourteen years, he definitely would be Over This.
> 
> ...I know. I love Melissa. But not everybody survived this one.


	9. Chapter 9

When Peter comes back to himself, someone is dragging him through the grass.

He’s not ashamed to admit that his first thought is they’re going back to the house, and that he reacts very negatively to the idea. That said, his body’s still in no state for him to do any real harm, and so dropping his legs like that is entirely uncalled-for.

“Okay, if you can curse me out in Sumerian, you can give me better leverage so we make it to Lydia’s Jacuzzi some time this year,” the person standing over him pants out.

Stiles, Peter thinks. He recognizes the voice. Stiles was dragging him. “Can’t feel my _spine_ ,” he grits out between his teeth.

“Bullshit, you’ve been kicking me for the last two hundred yards,” Stiles retorts. “Which, by the way—really don’t appreciate when you already—weigh like somebody bricked those abs. The hell with werewolves and those, anyway? Do they just sprout when you’re bitten?”

The world is slowly coming into view. They’re on somebody’s lawn, with the harsh halo of fluorescent lights cutting out the features of Stiles’ face from the shadows. He’s bent over, gripping his knees, streaks of dried blood encrusting his clothes to one side of him, as if he’d tried to put Peter over his shoulder at some point. It’s all Peter’s blood, Peter’s nose tells him. Then Stiles puts up one hand to rub the sweat out of his eyes, and Peter spots the glimmer of silvery threads curling over the man’s forearm and hand. The lines snake over the fingertips and then form some kind of central symbol on the man’s palm—he doesn’t get a good look at it before Stiles lowers his arm, but what he does see reminds him of vévés or grimoire seals.

“I wasn’t bitten,” Peter mutters.

Stiles pushes up on his knees a little, and turns fatigue-widened eyes onto Peter. The man’s trembling all over, a fine shake like someone crawling through the last legs of a marathon. “Yeah, yeah,” he starts, and then has to stop to gasp.

He looks more likely than Peter to fall over, and Peter’s already on the ground. And they’re still near enough to the damned woods that Peter can smell the decaying pine needles—Peter takes a deep, experimental breath, testing his ribcage. Pain immediately scrapes twin sets of red-hot nails across his chest, but no blood comes up. He probably can roll over.

“Oh, hey, wait—” Stiles hisses as Peter flops himself. Fingertips dash over the back of Peter’s shoulder and then Stiles hastily backs up as the sheer agony of the movement makes Peter shift. “Or not. Yeah, sure, it’s a gated community but let’s still do this in full view of the road.”

“It’s Beacon Hills, I refuse to believe—can’t bribe security,” Peter grunts. 

His left arm collapses under him as soon as he’s over, but his right leg stays up. It takes nearly a minute, but he eventually gets his right arm braced, and can lift his face out of the grass.

Stiles is squatting across from him, precisely out of range of any initial lunge Peter might be able to make. When he sees Peter’s looking at him, he stands up and shows he had been holding a taser in the hand that’d been tucked into his knees. He casually pulls up his shirt and sticks the taser back into a holster under his arm, then comes over. “So, you feel like getting out of Lydia’s lawn any time soon?”

Peter considers several witty replies to that, but in the end, his healing insides handle the response and twist so sharply that he nearly sways off his elbows. He’s dimly aware of Stiles muttering near him, and then there’s a sharp jerk under his left, weaker arm. He snarls reflexively, but can’t do any more than that, and Stiles is careful to position himself so that his head’s well below Peter’s teeth.

With Peter’s arm thrown over his shoulders, Stiles resumes their progress across the grass. The building before them is unusually small for a house, considering Stiles mentioned ‘gated,’ and Peter’s still trying to resolve the puzzle when its sliding glass doors open and a redheaded woman about Stiles’ age looks out at them.

“Would you get in so that I can turn on the sprinklers?” she says. She gives Peter a brief, distinctly dismissive glance, then returns to glaring at Stiles as he heaves himself and Peter up the three-step stair to the door. “I’ve already booked the steam cleaners, but the landscaper can’t come till next week. Because _someone_ ruined the bushes at the preserve’s west entrance, and fixing that is priority for our nonexistent tourist trade.”

“Wasn’t me, I said just close the whole thing down,” Stiles grunts. “Parrish didn’t get the tape on all the—”

At the top step, Stiles’ strength gives out and he stumbles heavily, then pitches forward. He’s clearly not going to recover, but credit to him, when he realizes, he wheels himself into the wall beside the door. Lydia—presumably—sees what’s going to happen and pivots smoothly out of the way so that Peter can fall _through_ the doorway, onto the…line of fluffy towels that leads to a nearby air mattress, with plastic sheeting under both of those.

“If you think we’re about to kill you, trust me, I wouldn’t ruin the resale value of our guest house like that,” Lydia says in an exceptionally non-reassuring way, walking back over.

The towels were fairly cushioning, but Peter’s still in a ridiculous amount of pain after the fall. He thinks his bones might be healed, more or less—likely they’ll have to reset half of them—but his internal injuries are going to need actual treatment. He also thinks he can still feel his emergency wolfsbane packets in one pants pocket, so he decides to lie flat and let the other two snipe away while he convinces his arm to move down and confirm that. And if that makes them think he’s weaker than he is and gives him _any_ idea of what’s wrong with this town, all the better.

“Lydia, he’s been in town for what, five hours and she already tried to eat him and his sister,” Stiles says. He actually sounds like he might be reprimanding her. “He already knows things are bad, let’s move on to the part where we’re also trying to get them out.”

Wait. “What happened to Talia?” Peter says sharply, twisting over.

He has just enough time to see Lydia has a syringe in her hand, and to see the way she barely startles before determination narrows her eyes. Stiles bites back what sounds like an aggravated noise, then clamps down on Peter’s shoulders as Lydia stabs Peter in the left pectoral with the syringe. The silver tattooing is showing on both of Stiles’ forearms now, and as Peter snarls and surges up against the other man’s hold, he sees more tendrils weaving their way out from under Stiles’ shirt and up his throat.

And then—then Peter is. Is somewhere else.

It’s just for a second—it just feels like a second, Peter corrects himself. When the room reappears around him, it’s clear more time has passed. He’s closer to the bed, with Stiles and Lydia each having taken one of his arms, and judging from the amount of filth sticking the towels to his back, whatever was in the syringe has taken effect. He also feels _much_ better.

“Nine Herbs,” Stiles mutters.

Peter frowns up at the man. He’s positive he hadn’t said anything aloud, and Stiles hadn’t been looking down at him.

Before he can actually ask anything, Stiles and Lydia give him one last heave and send most of his torso sprawling over the air mattress. The air forces itself out of Peter’s lungs and he instinctively curls up, pulling his legs up to the knees onto the mattress. Then catches his breath as, falling nearly on him, Stiles gasps so roughly that Peter can smell the inflammation starting in the man’s throat. The tattooing is gone, Peter notes.

Lydia isn’t nearly as drained and she straightens up. Regards them for a second, then turns and walks away. Peter hears her shut the door—she also puts up some magical protections, based on the tingle in the air—and then she comes back. She has the syringe again.

“That’s—that’s just mean,” Stiles chokes, seeing her. “C’mon. You know that just makes me fall asleep.”

Stiles obviously isn’t a regular human anymore, and from what Peter’s seen to date, he’s not within the norm for magic-workers either. But still, he shouldn’t dismiss the Nine Herbs in that kind of tone, as if Lydia’s trying to offer him aspirin for a severed limb.

“What I’m saying,” Lydia says dryly. She and Stiles shoot annoyed looks at each other, making it clear this is a well-worn exchange of theirs, and then she slips the syringe into a small black leather case. “I refilled the minifridge and the herbal cabinet, and put Jordan’s spare set of clothes in the bathroom, since you got his height wrong.”

“I did not—you didn’t read my whole text, that was the _other_ guy, what’s his name with the resting bitchface,” Stiles protests. “Laura’s brother. I just didn’t end up getting him, Scott did.”

Peter stiffens at the mention of his niece. Both Stiles and Lydia notice, though they continue their bickering for a little longer. Lydia tells Stiles she and her mother have an appointment with the mayor first thing in the morning, so not to call her if he needs anything else. Stiles tells her he never calls her anyway, she again tells him that’s what she’s saying, and then she finally appears to be leaving for good.

“Oh, and call your father already,” Lydia says on her way out of the room. “I’m not doing it this time.”

“I don’t need to call him,” Stiles snaps after her, with noticeably more vehemence than he’d previously used with her. On top of that, he glances at Peter as if one, he’s suddenly recalled his audience, and two, is actually concerned about it.

Lydia doesn’t bother replying to that, and the next thing Peter hears is another door closing and locking. And then it’s just him and Stiles.

The other man appears to have caught his breath, though the way he gingerly pushes himself to a sitting position says he’s hardly restored. At this distance, with better light than dense tree cover allows, Peter can also see that Stiles’ complexion is drained, not pale. Thick darkened patches hang about under his eyes and hollow out his cheeks, while his scent has the unmistakable tang of someone who hasn’t slept regularly in some time.

“I sort of pushed around on your stomach till the blood stopped coming up, but I don’t have x-ray vision and psychic surgery’s not really my thing either,” Stiles says after a second. He isn’t quite facing Peter, and keeps himself turned slightly away as he absently wipes at his face. He looks around, then uses his foot to hook up a towel, which he offers to Peter, again without meeting Peter’s eyes. “Nine Herbs usually realigns everything for Scott, but I know he’s a nonstandard werewolf so do you…does it feel like…can you tell if something’s missing?”

“Like an organ?” Peter asks. He flexes his muscles, starting at his shoulders and working his way down to his toes. Everything aches, but nothing feels as if it’ll need to be redone, not even his bones. “Is that what we’re dealing with? A kidney-snatcher?”

“What? No, what kind of insane urban-legend messageboard were you—” Stiles’ outrage abruptly flattens after he’s wheeled about to look at Peter “—oh. Okay. I get it. Ha ha, nice, well, that one’s officially ruled out. And you could just ask. You saw her, it’s not like we’re gonna lie at this point.”

Peter shrugs off Stiles’ absurd little offended tone, then grimaces against how that pulls at his sore spine. Then he cautiously levers himself up to sit on the edge of the mattress. He’s covered in a thin layer of rot-smelling blackish gunk, which is the Nine Herbs’ doing. Grimacing again, he picks up another towel and starts to rub the stuff off of himself. It’s unusually sticky compared to his previous experiences with that remedy and he rubs harder at his arm.

Stiles clears his throat and Peter looks up to find the other man’s hand hovering over his wrist, about to grab him. He blinks, then looks down and…that black patch is still there. And not oily, but in fact is a fresh mark on him that was _under_ the oil the Nine Herbs had caused his body to sweat out. It’s flush with his skin, he notes, twisting his arm in the light. Not like a tattoo, more like a bruise. A black stripe about two inches wide that runs halfway about his wrist before ending in a sort of swoop, as if…

Fingers touching it, about to grab him. He remembers.

“We can’t find anything to fix that,” Stiles says abruptly. “We’ve tried a lot of stuff—Scott’s swallowed so many half-assed concoctions for the cause. It’ll go away eventually, if you leave town and never run into her again, but you have to go really, really far. Like across the Atlantic.”

Peter looks at him, and now Stiles isn’t evading his gaze, but instead meets him with a steady stare. After a moment, Peter looks down at his arm. Flexes his fingers, makes a fist of them. Aside from the cosmetic appearance, nothing else seems to be affected. Which honestly does _not_ reduce how disturbing it is, but it does make it into something to just add to the list for consideration later. “What were you saying about my sister? And where’s Derek?”

“Your sister got tricked into coming here, but she’s okay, she’s over at my house with Laura and Derek. Laura’s fine, by the way. My dad’s there, so nothing will grab them. Well, so long as they stay inside,” Stiles says. He flicks a look at Peter. “You all seem terrible at that, at least so far.”

“Well, based on what _I’ve_ seen to date, subscribing to the old ‘go to ground’ adage seems like a terrible idea,” Peter snaps back.

When Stiles twitches, Peter is honestly surprised. When the other man suddenly gets up and starts bustling around, getting more towels to heap in Peter’s lap and then crossing the room to open a door to what turns out to be a bathroom, Peter has absolutely no response except to sit and stare.

“Okay, yeah, that’s actually valid. Your family kind of had the right idea, just getting the hell out of town the moment things started getting weird,” Stiles says almost apologetically. He briefly disappears into the bathroom and rattles around in it, then comes back out. “And I guess if a whole pack cuts and runs, that should totally be a sign about _how_ weird. Not that we really got up to speed for a few more years, because the Argents keep their mouths _shut_ , I’ll give you that. They’re a bunch of lunatics but you can’t fault their commitment to insanity. Well. Couldn’t.”

“Are they all gone now? I only saw Gerard’s body,” Peter finally says. “And under the circumstances—”

“No, he was real. He’s in the morgue—half of him, anyway.” Stiles pauses midway through messing with a small remote. The expression that crosses his face right then is…complex, but Peter thinks it mostly reads of long-standing resignation, one that’s far too old to fit Stiles’ age. “We’re gonna have to get the other half back tomorrow and _that’s_ gonna be a party, let me tell you. Or not. I mean, you just got whacked around by some freaky hallucination monster and then I had to drag you a couple miles and now you’re staying in Lydia’s guest house and she’s a banshee, by the way, and will burst your eardrums if you permanently stain the tile. So you wanna clean up and eat something and then we’ll talk?”

As Stiles looks back up and meets Peter’s puzzled gaze, he clicks the remote. The air-conditioning suddenly whooshes up a level and begins to clear out the—Peter had not realized the _stench_ he was carrying until just now.

“Not a werewolf here, but yeah, it’s just a little…there’s deodorant in there. And Jackson’s old aftershave, I just saw, but I don’t know if eau de douche is your line,” Stiles rambles on. “I mean, okay, you’ve had your moments but so far I can kind of see a justification for all of them. He just needed to fucking _stop_ with the lacrosse insecurity till we were all sure we were gonna live to graduation.”

He’s tired, Peter thinks absently, and then Peter narrows his eyes. At the same time Stiles seems to come to the same realization, because he stops talking as abruptly as he’d started. He tosses the remote aside, turns in a little circle, then glances at Peter.

“I’ll hang around. I’m not going out again tonight either,” he offers, awkward and wary in equal measures. “One unconscious werewolf rescue a night is my limit.”

“I can smell your blood sugar levels and you are about to fall on your face,” Peter says.

“Well, that’s because you’re a thousand pounds of muscle and your niece didn’t listen to Jordan when he told her that part of the park was off-limits to visitors,” Stiles snaps, bristling.

“My niece is an idiot,” Peter says.

Stiles starts to deliver a retort, then cuts himself off. He looks hard at Peter and at least three distinct flavors of suspicion cross his face. If some sort of town-encompassing horror wasn’t living in Peter’s old family home, he’d absolutely be enjoying how mobile Stiles’ features are.

“Okay,” Stiles says after a long moment. “Okay. So…I’ll eat a candy bar, and you’ll go…”

“Make myself presentable for company,” Peter says.

For some reason, Stiles looks suspicious again, even though Peter was honestly only trying to fill in the words so they’re not here all night. “Yeah. Yeah. You do that, and then we’ll talk about the nasty in the woods.”

“It’s a date,” Peter says, as a few things start to add together.

Stiles shoots him a look, and then literally side-walks himself out of the room. He is quite good at it, no stumbling and avoids running himself into the jamb, but still. He’s an odd one, and Peter’s seen more than a few.

Then again, Peter thinks as he attempts to get himself off the mattress, ‘odd’ is probably the best he can hope for right now.

* * *

The guest house is very well-stocked with toiletries, which is a small victory for the night. A hot shower and plenty of soap can do wonders and when Peter emerges from the shower, he is in much better condition to tackle the situation, even if his body still aches from the earlier fight.

“What happened to my phone?” he asks Stiles as he comes into the kitchenette/living area of the place.

Stiles is sitting where the kitchenette corner bends around to form a short bar, a lone pizza crust sitting on a plate in front of him, doing something on a laptop. He starts to answer Peter, looking up, and then his entire upper body spasms. If Peter wasn’t smelling a sudden spike of arousal in the man’s scent, he would have assumed epilepsy or something similar.

“I put a shirt there!” Stiles squawks. Besides his range of facial expressions, he also has a remarkable range of vocal tics.

“It didn’t fit, and my own shirt is hardly salvageable,” Peter says. Then grows steadily less amused as Stiles continues to twitch around in repressed outrage. The shirtlessness had, in fact, been calculated, but it isn’t turning out to be the type of distraction Peter was hoping for. Even off his guard, Stiles is proving to be difficult to manipulate. “And it appears as if all of the towels were used on the floor, though if this is _that_ offensive to your eyes, I’ll go get a bedsheet so we can have an intelligent discussion about the demon squatting in my old house.”

The word ‘demon’ straightens Stiles’ spine immediately. “What do you know?” he says sharply.

Peter considers being coy and using the man’s frustration against him, then dismisses that idea. He’s tired too, and now that his body isn’t spending all its energy trying to reassemble vital organs, it’s reminding him he skipped dinner. He goes over to the fridge and assesses its offerings. “Keeping in mind this is based off the research I had time to do when we realized Laura wasn’t responding—by the way, you could have faked a text back to us and avoided our whole visit—”

“No, we couldn’t have, we had to break her phone when we realized she’d actually gotten part of the way in the house,” Stiles says. Then he gestures Peter to try a different cabinet. “Glasses there.”

Far too smug, Peter thinks irritably, and then ignores the little Talia-voice in his head making comments about pots and kettles as he sets the orange juice on the counter and then gets a glass. He pours himself some juice and then returns to the fridge to consider his food choices. “Anyway, I did some looking into events since we’d left, and the deaths have clustered over the years, but they don’t coincide with other signs of anything like a territory dispute between packs. Hunters also wouldn’t keep leaving bodies in the same house—they’re not _complete_ idiots and they don’t want serial-killer charges. On the other hand, it seemed ritualistic to me. And then of course, there’s the fact that the house is reappearing.”

“Yeah, that’s hard to miss, and the crazed developer story never got any traction,” Stiles mutters. He rubs one eye, then his mouth as he stifles a yawn. “It’s not a classical demon, so don’t start suggesting exorcism rites.”

“No, obviously, since after I broke out the holy water, it just amused itself with us and a very good imitation of Gerard Argent’s body,” Peter says, retrieving what appears to be a falafel wrap. He takes the plastic off one end and bites into it: the breading on the falafel has softened unpleasantly, but the only other choices are a chicken wrap that smells off and a half-eaten chopped salad. “I drew some warding runes as well, in blood, and it only held the thing off for a—”

“It wasn’t an imitation.” Stiles looks at Peter, then pushes down the top of his laptop and settles interlaced hands over it. “You know. The body. That was Gerard. He talked himself onto a minimum-security work detail and then got away and ran here. We really were looking for an escaped felon.”

Peter almost snaps that he’s had enough tangents and they’ve already established that everything here is either motivated by whimsy or horror, but something about the other man’s manner stops him. Stiles is being serious.

“Oh, and your phone—I guess maybe it fell out? I mean, it’s not like I patted you down—” a trace of lust comes and goes in Stiles’ scent, so quickly it must be unconscious “—so I don’t know either. I guess we could try and look for it, but—”

“You think it’ll use it against me or my family,” Peter says slowly. He puts his wrap down on the table, sucking in his breath. Then spots a landline in the corner and takes a step towards it—then back, even as Stiles starts to get out of his seat. “And I can’t even call them to—it _has_ to be a demon. This is like living in the damned Dark Ages.”

“Hey, look, I said they’re with my dad. He’s not going to let them fall for that one again, and when the stores are open we can get you all prepaid phones to use for now,” Stiles says. He’s still half-up, leaning over the counter as he watches Peter with an expression that’s half-concerned, half-wary. “You guys will be okay.”

“So you say,” Peter mutters, reluctantly following back.

Stiles cocks his head as if he didn’t quite hear Peter. Then he rolls his eyes and tosses himself back into the chair in a huff. “Oh, okay, fine, like we haven’t tried to warn you off from the start, and like I didn’t just haul your werewolf ass of lead across half the preserve, and like you all didn’t just _leave_ when this all started—”

“Well, were we expected to stay put and get shot in the head with wolfsbane bullets? Down to little four-year-old Cora?” Peter snaps. “I apologize, Stiles, I had no idea we needed to martyr ourselves for your sake.”

Oddly, Stiles doesn’t respond. He does look up, clearly still angry, but his lips are pressed tightly together and his eyes almost immediately zig off Peter to the far wall. He starts to open his laptop again, then reverses himself and shuts it. Then opens it again, and all the while he’s twisting on his seat as if he’s still considering storming out of the room.

Peter tilts his head and studies the other man’s face. “Is that the point of the demon?”

“What? No. I mean, how the hell should I know, it’s a hellish entity with infernal desires developed over an eternity of…of, I don’t know, being made of hell,” Stiles says, spitting the words out at his laptop. He stares down at his hands for another second, tensed all over, and then abruptly jerks his head up. His shoulders slump. “I mean, look, if you’d been in your house at the time, I’m pretty sure it would have killed you all. It’s not like you would’ve had any more luck at exorcising it than they did, the first time around.”

“When?” Peter says after a moment.

“I was ten.” Stiles frowns at Peter. He’s patently disbelieving of Peter’s reaction, but he doesn’t seem to want to actually question why Peter’s staying calm. “It wasn’t that strong. Whatever the Argents did really fucked it up, and it was a true demon at that point. Some Catholic liturgy, wave your cross and sprinkle the holy water, it _should_ have bounced. But…five people went in there. Four people came back out, and one was my dad and one was Scott’s mom and the other two were deputies who committed suicide before the end of the year.”

Peter nods, then considers the bar. He hooks his foot around the nearest stool, tugs it, and when Stiles only twitches minimally, he pulls it the rest of the way out and takes a seat. “The fifth person, they were possessed?”

“They were…not just that. We still don’t know. I don’t think—” Then Stiles grimaces. It’s almost savage, the way he does that, as if he wants to contort his lips off his face. He’s not merely correcting himself—he hates the correction. “I know she didn’t _die_ die. We get flickers, sometimes. It’s more like—like the demon and her, it’s like one plus one equals square root of two. I don’t know. We’ve spent close to half my life on this and I don’t _know_. Why are you okay with this?”

It annoys Stiles when Peter just shrugs, even though the most emotionally dense person could’ve seen that tangent coming. “I’m not ‘okay’ with it, Stiles. But whatever you might think, leaving this town didn’t mean my family was completely free of enemies,” Peter says, nibbling at his wrap. “And none of them ever died because I wasted my time being frustrated about them.”

For a second Stiles stares at him. Then—and this _is_ unexpected—Stiles laughs. He looks almost his age when he does that. “And they did die, right? You seem like that kind of guy.”

“I _am_ that kind of guy,” Peter agrees.

Stiles laughs again, a little more bitterly, and then settles back. He flips open the laptop but keeps looking at Peter. “Well, okay. We do think the demon…that there’s something about your family, that you’re all back here for a reason. Like Gerard—he had no reason to come back. My dad visited him in jail twice, actually—trying to find out what happened that night, so we could fix it. Gerard sold him a bunch of near-fatal bullshit twice, and the asshole knew if he set foot here again, my dad would straight-up murder him.”

“That is surprising. Not that Gerard was untrustworthy, that the thing in our old house found anything to tempt him back with,” Peter says. He drinks some of the juice and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’d heard what was left of the Argents had completely disowned him.”

“Yeah, they did. I mean, a couple actually came in years later and tried to help us, though that went _really_ badly,” Stiles says. He slouches back in his chair and looks at something on his computer. “Well, whatever it had over him, it worked. But she’s like that. She does get into your head.”

“She—” Peter starts.

Before he can finish asking, Stiles spins the laptop around so that Peter can see the screen—which is filled with pictures of his family’s house. High-quality, close-up photos. Some of them even appear to have been taken from the inside.

“The house coming back…that made us think for the longest time that it wasn’t actually _you_ , but something about your family generally, or something they’d done. Like magic spells on the foundation or buried amulets or something like that,” Stiles says. He glances at Peter, checking that Peter’s paying attention, and then starts pushing the photos around. Minimizes a few, blows up others. “We’ve been trying to figure it out without calling you, because by the way, also, my dad is actually kind of good at his job and he did track down where you went.”

Peter can’t help a wince. He had honestly worried about that, for a good number of years. Even after Talia had assured him that they had enough political levers to pull if anyone showed up—even after he’d gotten his law degree and put in place his own precautions. Hunters also have reasons to keep their activities off the books, whereas an angry parent pressing charges against him, sending him to _jail_ …when that happens, it’s not just his problem, or even Talia’s problem. It’s the problem of every werewolf and other supernatural being, and one that easily resolves with Peter’s death, and even the Hales can’t see all of them coming.

In an odd way, he thinks, that’d been when he had realized the full value of a pack. Before they’d left Beacon Hills, he’d been so frustrated with his family, he’d honestly thought he could do better without them. If they’d stayed, that could very well have evolved into a darker direction.

“We kind of had other problems by then, you know,” Stiles says, sounding amused.

“I thought you said the failed exorcism happened when you were ten,” Peter says, shaking himself. He’d fallen into his thoughts for at least a few seconds. “And I know I didn’t shift in front of you.”

“Oh, nope, just the glowy eyes and threatening to bite my head off if I made any noises. Also, you know, the Argents were pulling magical murderous shit all over the woods?” Stiles says. Incredibly, he’s even more amused. “Dad saw a bunch of it, and he wanted to know what it was, and my mom had an anthropology degree so she started doing research—and anyway, the demon was already loose, it just was weaker. Still was messing with people. Dad figured you’d at least dropped me at the station and hadn’t left me in our house or your house, so you probably weren’t possessed when you left. And he didn’t want to find out what possessed werewolves were like.” 

Peter’s only half-listening to the end part. “I said that to you? I don’t remember that.”

And something else is bothering him, something about—Stiles’ scent had changed slightly in the middle of his explanation, even though his voice and heartbeat hadn’t given anything away. But for some reason, Peter thinks there was a subject change.

“You _also_ made up a bunch of lies about what would happen if I didn’t go to bed on time. I mean, honestly, the dream wolf will eat all the dream sheep I don’t count? What kind of trauma-causing babysitting playbook did that come from?” Stiles says, tapping at his laptop. Then he sits back as a slideshow of the photos starts to play. “So look, your house. Kali said it didn’t look like she remembered, but it’s Kali, so I made a trip down to the library’s newspaper archives. And actually, she’s probably not lying this time.”

Peter starts to ask what Stiles means, but then he sees it too. It _is_ their house, but certain elements have changed. No, not changed—have been restored. It’s an older version than what he lived in.

“So it’s probably you, but also probably something about a specific era for this building,” Stiles says. “Any ideas what? Or when?”

“Let me see,” Peter says, holding out his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually do wonder that about the abs. When Derek bit Erica, this apparently fixed her damaged hair immediately. So maybe that's the analogous fix with men?
> 
> Personally, the idea of a four-year-old making such an impression on Peter that he remembers every single detail of that one interaction fourteen years ago is creepy, and not in a remotely handwave-able way. Also not really realistic either, considering what else was going on at the time. But that's half the comedy now! Peter having to get up to speed while _Stiles_ is the one who's spent fourteen years stewing over this formative experience and going over every tiny detail. Because what happens when you're four either blurs away or stands out in crystal clarity, because memory's odd like that. I promised to bring the Dramatic Irony.


	10. Chapter 10

“I’ll drive,” Derek tells Allison once they get to the car. She opens her mouth and he shakes his head. “You’re an Argent. Either I drive or I’m going back.”

Allison sucks her breath a little and he thinks she’s going to argue. But then she grimaces and pulls out her keys and hands them over. He waits till she’s backed up and is halfway around the front of the car before getting into the driver’s seat, and she looks…more resigned than annoyed about it, he thinks.

“I know you won’t believe me, but I’m not interested in killing you, or your family, or any other werewolf out there,” she says as she gets in. Her seat’s pulled up as far as it can probably go and she frowns as she adjusts it to make room for her legs. Then she hisses, grabbing at the door, as Derek pulls away from the corner. “Wait, can you give me—you should put a seatbelt on if you don’t want us to get pulled over. And go straight ahead for now.”

“You seriously think the cops around here are paying attention to that kind of thing?” Derek asks her, mostly to cover his embarrassment. He actually hadn’t meant to mess with her like that, but the car’s got some wear on it and doesn’t handle that smoothly. On the other hand, she’s a hunter, so he’s not going to just apologize. 

“You’d be surprised what they pay attention to,” Allison says, putting on her own seatbelt. But then she twists around and pulls a bag out of the backseat. She plops it onto her lap and puts one hand in, then pauses. “Derek, if I wanted to kill you, I would’ve done it on the way over. I only opened up Stiles’ runes for one person to leave so it’s not like your sister could’ve come after you.”

Derek brakes. There actually is an intersection, though he could’ve let the car go another yard or so. If he was trying to drive well with this brick on wheels, and he’s not totally sure he wants to. “That’s a great way to convince me you’re not actually—”

“I really, really do not care about werewolves.” Allison pushes both hands down on her bag and lifts her head and stares straight out through the windshield. She takes a breath, and then a longer, not so sharp one. Then she looks at Derek. “I really don’t. For all I care, you can run around biting the whole town. I don’t care. My last name’s just—it doesn’t matter, all right? Yes, I know, the Argents have been hunting werewolves for hundreds of years, and you know what? As the current leader of the family, I’m saying we’re done. We put in our time, somebody else can deal with them now. Now, do you want to know or not?”

They stare at each other for a few seconds. She’s genuinely worked up about it—she’s trying to keep it out of her voice, but Derek can smell it all over her. And then her heartrate drops and she blows her breath out, flopping back in the seat.

“Okay,” Derek says. When she glances at him, not quite believing it, he shrugs and proceeds through the intersection. “So what was your grandfather looking for, if it wasn’t werewolves?”

“Somebody has to have told you about him and the Nemeton by now,” Allison says after a moment. She still doesn’t believe that they’re good—which is smart of her, because they’re not and Derek’s just got a lot of experience with people who get distracted by bickering—but she’s going to take the out. “They think he was trying to use it against other people, right? Well, that’s not what happened. He wasn’t using it, he was trying to _take it over_. Take a left up here.”

Derek goes right. “We’ll go wherever you want to go when I get why,” he says over her protest. “If you don’t tell me, we’re just going straight back. Just because I came out here doesn’t mean I believe you.”

“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have bothered leaving. You already think I will tell you more than Scott or any of them,” Allison says. She doesn’t seem that concerned about their detour, now that she’s over her initial surprise. And then she unzips the bag so that Derek can see the contents and there’s a giant taser in it. Before Derek can do more than snarl, Allison shoves it deeper into the bag and takes out a tattered-looking notebook. With both hands. “Derek, if you’re going to drive, you need to stay off the curb.”

They hadn’t gone that far on it, and the curb’s low anyway, and Derek bites back both excuses as he steers the car back onto the road. “Yeah, about that, so who introduced us?”

“Well, I’m guessing Scott for me—sorry about making you sit through our fight, by the way. I’m not…I’m not usually that kind of person.” The expression that flicks over Allison’s face isn’t just embarrassed, it’s regretful. Then she tries to shrug it off, opening up the notebook and flipping through it, but she still smells guilty to Derek. “I’ve been in town for a week, so I knew about Laura’s visit. I figured someone from her pack would show up sooner or later.”

“Because you’re not interested in werewolves,” Derek snorts.

Allison snaps the notebook shut so quickly that she almost catches her chin. “No. All I’m interested in is getting my father back. He went into your old house three years ago and he never came back.”

“Okay,” Derek says after a moment.

He’s trying to sound as noncommittal as possible. If it was up to him, he just wouldn’t say anything, but Allison seems to be waiting on a response and Derek can’t just circle the neighborhood forever. 

Surprisingly, she seems to take it for what he means, just acknowledging and not as gloating, like pretty much every other hunter Derek’s met would have. “We found out what my grandfather was really up to,” she says. “We found his notes for it. He was trying to take all the power out of the tree and put it in himself—if you’re going to have a Nemeton do things for you, you have to do things for it too, and my grandfather just didn’t want to have to go through all that trouble. He wanted a shortcut.”

“But the tree’s gone, isn’t it?” Derek says.

“It is, but the power it had is still around, and the spell my grandfather was doing, it wasn’t just interrupted. It…it kind of mutated,” Allison says, lifting one hand. She makes a semi-circle with her fingers and then moves it in a grasping motion. “And there was this demon and when it got caught in the spell—look, demons and Nemetons are the same that way, you have to make a bargain. They have to play by the rules too. But if they don’t want to…if they want to do what they want, without having to make deals with us…you know what you get?”

“I don’t know, I’m not really—an evil god?” Derek says.

He’s honestly just guessing, because this is not his area of expertise, or even of interest. But Allison blinks hard, and Derek nearly twists the car onto the curb again, because…really?

“It’s not what my grandfather was trying to do. Even he wasn’t _that_ insane. And I don’t think the demon did either—I think it was honestly just an accident, a lot of bad things happening at the same time. But now that it knows it can be done, it isn’t going to stop,” Allison tells him. “That’s what the demon wanted with my grandfather. It needed to know what he was doing so it could figure out how to finish it.”

Derek drives on for another block, then pulls over. They’re one intersection away from the Stilinski house, and if he’s going to look into this with Allison, he needs to make a call now. Any longer and he won’t be able to sneak back before his mother finds out.

“So it got into his head, got him to come back here, and then ate him so it could get his memories, or something like that, that’s what you’re saying.” When Allison nods, Derek can’t help sucking his breath between his teeth. He’s not exactly sheltered, but this sounds crazier than even some of the stuff _Peter_ warned them off of. “But what, it doesn’t have everything? You’ve still got a piece it doesn’t have? And you’re going to what, walk up to it and ask it to give you back your dad’s body?”

That makes her bristle, which Derek was expecting. He wasn’t expecting the way her eyes go bright and wet, a moment before she squeezes back the tears and lifts her chin and gives him a look like his mother sometimes does, where she’s not even going to waste the time on telling him what he did wrong. She’s just going to fix it, and let him sit there and watch and see how she handled it on her own.

“It doesn’t kill everyone who walks into that house,” Allison says sharply. “Look, if Scott said—I know what happened to his mom, but it’s not the same for everyone, and if we act like it is, then we’re just too scared of it to really figure it out. I’ve done the research and I _know_ how to shut this down. Because that’s what I want to do, all right? I’m not hunting werewolves because they’re not who’s been hunting my family. I’m hunting this demon.”

“Okay, fine, but—”

“And if I’m wrong and my dad _is_ dead, then I still want his body back. I want that, and then I want to burn that house and the demon down,” Allison says. She doesn’t raise her voice, but she still makes herself heard over him. “And I’m going to be the one who gets that right.”

They stare at each other for a few seconds, until a random noise outside makes Derek jump. He glances outside and realizes it’s just a crow flying by, and also that the sky’s getting grey. The night’s nearly over.

“I know it’s your house, but it’s kind of—we pretty much have to,” Allison adds, in a much different voice. When he looks over, she ducks her head before tucking her hair back behind an ear. She’s still meeting his eyes, but she’s definitely embarrassed. “It’s not…it’s not personal, you know.”

“I’m actually pretty okay with ditching it. Not like it seems to like us either,” Derek says. He pushes back in his seat, then gets a grip on himself and restarts the car. Then shrugs off the odd look he knows she’s giving him. “I think you mean that, getting rid of this demon. So okay, I’ll go with you on that. But this doesn’t mean I trust you on anything else.”

Allison doesn’t even hesitate. “Then take a left this time.”

Derek drives up to the intersection again, and this time, he follows her directions. She steers them through two more intersections before they hit a county road and he has to ask. Because yeah, going with it but not just going with it. “Where are we going?”

“The old north church. Well, the cemetery behind it, actually,” Allison says. She opens up the notebook and starts looking through it again. “If you’re okay with your old house, how do you feel about digging up your family?”

“What?”

* * *

Apparently, Derek has a great-grandaunt buried in the cemetery. This is news to him.

“Here are the photocopies of the death certificate and the parish records, and here’s the marriage certificate that shows her maiden name,” Allison says, spreading out papers all over the back of her car. “Then it got confusing because they started running out of space, so the church started digging up and relocating bodies without telling the families, but Gerard worked through all the complaints and narrowed it down to these three plots—”

“No, I’m not—I think the papers say what you say they do,” Derek says, staring at them. He hasn’t looked at them, and he’s not going to, not with how transparently enthusiastic Allison is about explaining her research. That’s a better tell than any kind of history report. “It’s just why the hell would she get buried _here_?”

Allison frowns down at her papers. “Well, she married the deacon. And it was the late nineteenth century, you probably at least wanted to look religious—”

“What, no, I meant—this isn’t our family plot. We always bury family as close to us as possible. When my grandparents died, Mom and Peter buried them in the basement,” Derek says.

“In your basement? Where you live now?” Allison says. She doesn’t sound disapproving, exactly; it’s more like she’s still trying to make sure she heard right. “Is that a…a cultural thing?”

“It’s a, that way we know where they are, thing, so they don’t come back as something fucked-up,” Derek says, looking at her. “Do they not teach you this stuff?”

A flicker of annoyance goes over Allison’s face, but then she just folds up her paperwork. She stuffs it back into the old notebook and puts the notebook back into her bag, which she then moves off the trunk so she can pop it open to reveal a shovel and a spade. “Well, yeah, but what my family teaches is you chop werewolves in half to keep that from happening. I just figured maybe you wouldn’t want to talk about that.”

She’s got a point, Derek has to admit, so he grabs the shovel and spade for her. Allison at least doesn’t seem like she wants to keep arguing, and after she locks the car, she points them into the cemetery. And then she stops Derek.

“One more thing,” she says. She hesitates, then squares up her shoulders and holds out her hands. “Again, I’m not here for your family. And if you want to walk, you can still walk. But this is your last chance. Because—”

“I knew you were holding back something,” Derek says. “Just like a hunter, baiting traps.”

She doesn’t look that impressed. “Just like somebody who’s trying to show you how complicated this is, Derek. And I am telling you everything I know now. The only—the last thing is, I did tell Scott and Stiles and all of them about this too, and they didn’t—”

“You told them and they didn’t dig this woman up already?” Derek says.

Allison sighs. “I’m getting to that. There’s a curse. Only a family member can dig it up, or else the curse is triggered. And _again_ , even though you don’t believe me, I did not do anything to bring your family here. I didn’t get your sister here, and—”

“Well, you got me here,” Derek points out.

For a second Allison is stiff and blank-faced. Then, slowly and deliberately, she looks down the road. “I don’t have any of my weapons out and you have the car keys,” she says. “And I only went to you because my grandfather’s dead. What he knows, that thing in your house knows now.”

It’s a valid point. Then again, what’s also a valid point is that Derek can walk, and can do it before Allison can get him. And if he goes back to Stiles’ house, Laura is there and the two of them could try talking to Scott about this, at least to get Derek’s mother back and explain. 

If she’s gotten Peter back, otherwise she won’t come. Family first, Derek knows that. And if Scott already knows and refused to be involved—well, that says something about Allison’s theory. Maybe. Or maybe Scott had other reasons, because Derek doesn’t actually know the guy or what he wants. Derek also doesn’t actually know Allison, and just knows what she _says_ she wants.

This is also a fucking mess of things Derek doesn’t know, and standing here, knowing he doesn’t know, he just feels—feels like an idiot. Like he’s down in the dark in the corner with no idea what’s around it, and that’s the same helpless fearful anger that got him out here in the first place, and his head is just going in circles and. Look, he thinks to himself, he has to get hold of something. Just something. Even if it’s the wrong thing, if he doesn’t get hold of _anything_ , he’ll just keep spinning off and the longer he spins, the more lost he’ll be.

He looks back at Allison and then realizes she’s moved. She’s a foot closer to the gates. “If I go,” he starts.

“Then I’ll dig her up without you, and take my chances with the curse,” she says. She smells like she means it. “With my bare hands if I have to. You don’t—you haven’t lived here lately, Derek. At this point, with how bad it is, we can’t let it get _anything_ else.”

Allison holds his gaze for another second, then deliberately turns her back on him and starts walking into the cemetery. She gets to the gates before, cursing himself the entire way, Derek catches up with her.

“I don’t know if I trust you with whatever the hell’s buried with my family,” he mutters.

She shrugs it off, but she moves over to make room for him.

They quickly detour off the lone path in the place and start hiking over uneven ground. The cemetery isn’t well-maintained and a lot of the tombstones have sunk into the dirt, while brush has started to grow up around them. Taken together, it means Derek can barely keep an eye around them if he wants to make sure his barely-healed knee doesn’t take another hit.

This isn’t that near the preserve, but Derek still wishes the nearest houses were…well, nearer. Nobody’s awake yet so their windows are all dark, making them look smaller and less reachable, and while he normally doesn’t care about that, the sight of empty ground between himself and the houses is—is menacing. It’s the way he never can be sure now what he’ll see, whenever he glances up from trying to spot the next grave marker. Fake Peter had appeared out of nowhere and all that unoccupied space just seems like it’s inviting something to show up.

“She did marry out of the family,” Allison says suddenly. She pauses as Derek starts, then stubs his toe on a tombstone and curses. Her hand lifts towards him, but then swings back to grab her bag strap as he straightens up. “You wanted to know why she’s buried here. I think it’s actually her husband’s plot—where they buried her originally in this place.”

“I don’t get what she has to do with it. She died a hundred years ago, before any of this happened. Unless what, was she the one who put the demon in the Nemeton?” Derek mutters.

“Good thought, but nope. The demon was put in there during World War II. I mean, I think it’s actually a lot older than that, but it didn’t show up in town before that.” Allison pulls out her phone, consults something—Derek cranes his neck and sees she’s got a GPS app open—and then moves a couple feet over. “Right here. That’s why Gerard wasn’t prepared for it to show up, by the way. He didn’t know about the demon. It was too recent, it wasn’t in any of the old records he was checking.”

Derek takes the shovel and spade off his shoulder and looks down at the place Allison is pointing to. Thumps it a couple times with the heel of his foot, watching how the grass drags under his shoe. It’s firmly rooted, and the ground doesn’t give under his heel like anybody’s recently been at the spot.

“Your family’s been here for a really long time. Since before the Gold Rush, actually. And they’ve always lived in the same place,” Allison says. “Did you ever wonder about that?”

“No.” Derek looks up in time to catch her frown. “It’s not like my generation stayed. And nobody really wanted to talk about here.”

Weirdly, Allison looks taken aback. She even starts to apologize before catching herself, and what Derek actually finds himself wondering is whether she even was really trained by her family. She might have the tools but she doesn’t act like a hunter—she acts a lot like Scott, now that Derek thinks about it. This whole thing about being randomly nice in the middle of horrific shit going down.

“Well, what Gerard found is they were here for a reason. They didn’t just show up by accident, they moved here because it was unique,” Allison eventually says. “It’s actually in the name— _Beacon_ Hills.”

“Because it’s a beacon for crazy and evil and homicidal?” Derek asks.

Allison stares at him for a second. Her expression is odd, stiff like a doll’s, and it’s not till he thinks to check her scent that he realizes it’s not that she’s mad, but that she’s…she’s amused? And doesn’t want to show it?

“Kind of. There are these…magical currents. Think of magic like water, okay? So it flows into some places more than others—think of those like ponds. So this town is a big pond, and your family found it, and figured out a way to use it to protect themselves, like living with a giant moat around your house,” Allison tells him. She still smells amused, but she’s fighting to keep it out of her face or voice. He’s not sure whether it’s because she thinks it’s offensive to him or to herself. “They did some kind of magic ritual, way back when, and what Gerard was doing that night, he was trying to do a version of that.”

“Okay. And what does this have to do with my dead great-grandaunt here?” Derek says.

“Well, he did it wrong, and I’ve gone over his notes and I think that was because he had the wrong—he needed this crystal for the ritual. He had one, but not the same one your family used,” Allison says. “Because they buried it with your great-grandaunt, and according to this, he was pretty sure your family put a curse down to make sure other packs couldn’t steal their idea.”

“That does sound like us,” Derek says after a moment. 

Now that he’s thinking about it, he can even remember an afternoon from when he was a kid, when Peter was talking about that kind of behavior and their grandparents. Normally some powerful magical heirloom would also be right up Peter’s alley, but if it had to do with Beacon Hills, that would explain why not. Peter kept up-to-date with what’d happened after they left—at least, that’s the impression Derek always got, from the dark hints Peter would drop—but he hated talking about it. Derek’s mother just didn’t want to talk about it, and would just change the subject, but Peter _hated_ talking about it. He’d go out of his way to make life miserable for anybody who mentioned the place.

Which, Derek thinks as he picks up the shovel, is probably why Laura went out of her way to come near it. He shakes his head, then is about to stab the blade of the shovel into the ground when he notices Allison doing something: she’s taken out a handful of red strings and is busy knotting them together.

“They’re to keep the demon back,” she says when she sees him looking, and holds up her hand so he can see the cat’s cradle-type structure she’s weaving between her fingers. Then she pulls it off and lays it down on the ground. She moves over about a foot and starts another one.

“Scott had something like that, and he got it to back off. In the—we ended up in the preserve, and it was throwing illusions at us,” Derek says, adding more when he sees how pale she gets. “I think he also said after your grandfather, it’d calm down for a while.”

“It’s not that it calms down, it’s just that it needs time, when it wants to take somebody instead of just kill them,” Allison mutters, going back to the threads. She’d loosened up a little but now she’s stiff again, and not because she’s trying to choke back a chuckle. “These aren’t foolproof either, they don’t work when it’s really trying to get you. They just slow it down.”

Derek nods and makes a note to himself to try and swipe one, and then really starts digging. “So what’s the deal with you and Scott?”

He’s not trying to get her mad, not really; she is still a hunter and he does still have a hard time believing that no longer includes werewolves. And even if he did believe her, he’s not here to be friends with her, or to make her think that he’s going to drop his guard just because she’s found out things about his family that he didn’t know. And actually, he did think about it before he opened his mouth, because he’s not just an impulsive asshole like Peter thinks, and based on what he’s seen so far, he figures either she’ll get annoyed at him and maybe get sloppy enough to drop more information, or she’ll be annoyed at Scott and drop information about _him_. Either way, Derek gets more facts he didn’t know, and as much as he doesn’t _want_ to know what’s going on in this town, staying in the dark is obviously not going to work.

Literally, he thinks, remembering the strange blackness that’d come down when the demon had shown up. He grimaces and shakes off the memory, along with a clump of mud clinging to the shovel’s blade. Then looks over at Allison.

She’d gone quiet but he hadn’t noticed any drastic change in her heartbeat. He actually had wondered if maybe she hadn’t heard him, since the ground’s got a lot of rocks in it and they clank loudly whenever the shovel hits them. But she’s already looking back at him, so he stops himself just before he would’ve repeated the question.

“There’s not really a deal.” Allison isn’t angry. She’s not happy either, but she doesn’t seem so wound up about it as she had been back at the diner. She just sounds tired. “We used to work together, and now we don’t, and it’s not that we’re fighting, or competing, or anything like that. Honestly, if they get rid of it first, I’ll be happy for them. But I just…I just don’t think they’re going to be the ones.”

“Because they don’t know everything your grandfather knew?” Derek says. He hits another rock, and hard enough that he thinks he might have chipped the shovel. So he tips off the dirt and flips the handle around to look at the blade.

“No, they know. Grandfather broke out of prison a week ago, and I told them, and—anyway, even before that, I was going through everything I could find. They know what my theory is,” Allison says. After dropping a last knot of red thread, she straightens up. Pops her back, twists a few times at the waist, and then comes over to the edge of the hole and picks up the spade Derek left. “They just—don’t think it’s right. And they didn’t want to go digging up your great-grandaunt’s grave to check.”

The blade looks okay. Derek flicks his nail against it and the metal rings a little differently in that spot; he frowns and presses his fingers against the blade edge, but it doesn’t break off. He’s only about a foot down, and the hole’s just big enough for him to stand in, so there’s still a lot to go. “Because of this curse?”

“You know, actually, Scott said something about it, the one time I got him to say anything about why they wouldn’t believe me,” Allison says. A trace of resentment enters her voice as she moves around and bends down as if she’s going to start helping with the digging. “But Morrell and Deaton—when he wasn’t in the hospital—they’re both druids, and it’s not like I don’t know anything about magic, and Stiles _and_ his dad are both—both—I just think we could’ve gotten around it. I wasn’t asking to put us in more danger than we already are in.”

“What’s the curse supposed to do, anyway?” Derek asks. 

“It—”

Then they both stop and look down. Derek does that because he just heard a soft metallic _clink_ , even though he and Allison are holding their respective tools out of the hole, but the noise was way too soft for Allison to have heard. He doesn’t think she was just taking cues from him either, since she’d turned before he had. 

“I just heard,” Derek says at the same time that Allison, her knuckles going white around the spade, says, “I think you should get out of the hole.”

She’s calm about it, but there’s a strained undercurrent to her voice that immediately triggers Derek’s instincts for the way Peter acts when he’s really _not_ being sarcastic, and really does mean it. Derek’s halfway up beside her before he remembers who she is. “What—”

“Mist is coming up,” Allison mutters, grabbing his arm. As he glances down again, she yanks him forward, then shifts her hand to grab his elbow and pulls him behind her. “That wasn’t in any of the…let me try something.”

Derek is still trying to see down into the hole so he’s only half-listening, but she’s not moving towards him so he doesn’t think she’s any danger right now. And she is right, and there are thick white tendrils of fog seeping up over the edges of the hole. One’s almost at his ankle and when he steps back, the end twitches around like his move made it home in on him.

Allison had gone back to her bag, and now she comes up again, free hand curled around something. She tosses whatever it is into the hole—little white sand, Derek thinks, and then he sniffs and realizes it’s salt. The grains punch through the fog, leaving it looking like mesh, and then the tendrils start to thin out and melt into the ground. Derek strains all of his senses, shovel ready to go at anything, but it’s quiet.

“The curse was pretty vague, even as they go,” Allison says after a couple seconds have passed. “It was a lot like that one over King Tut’s tomb—don’t disturb this grave or else death will hunt you down with shining fangs.”

That sounds familiar, but it takes Derek some thinking to place it. Then he snorts. “Oh, that, I’ve heard that one. It’s just one of those sayings for us, it doesn’t really mean—”

Something huge and black _whooshes_ out of the grave and at least ten feet into the air. It’s snarling and wood is smashing and glinting lines swinging out from either side of it are making horrendous clashing noises and as Derek throws himself backward, he thinks _chains_?

Then he’s slammed down on his hands and knees, instinctively baring his fangs as a giant, chain-draped, _undead wolf_ growls back at him. Its skin is brown and wrinkled and hideously leathery, where it hasn’t split to show the yellowed bone. And there are fangs. Long ones, longer than Derek’s own. They’re not shiny, but as the thing lunges at him, he’s not going to fucking criticize the dentistry.

Derek doesn’t wait to see whether the thing about not attacking family is true either—he dodges and suddenly the zombie is nearly at his throat, and he can feel claws shredding into his sleeve. He doesn’t want to bite it—it smells like rotting shit—but it’s between him and the cemetery exit so he twists around, grabs a limb just before it pins down his leg, and he’s about to snap down on its shoulder when something smashes into it, knocking the wolf away from him.

Left unbalanced, Derek falls heavily on his side. He grunts through the impact, then jerks himself back to his feet to see the wolf’s been pushed only a few yards away. It’s jacking itself back up, joints cracking noisily, with a spade handle sticking out of its neck. As he watches, the flesh around the spade flexes and pushes it out so that it drops to the ground.

“Oh, my God,” Allison breathes. Derek looks up and as shocked as she _sounds_ , she’s also got what looks like a shotgun with two-thirds of the barrel sawed-off and she’s aiming it right at the undead wolf.

When it charges them, she fires. The blast hits the wolf squarely in the face, but the thing _doesn’t go down_. Its fucking face basically melts, but the thing’s body stays up as if it’s nailed in place. And as they watch, it stays up. Derek can see the bunched muscles in its mostly-intact shoulders and he’s pretty sure this isn’t going to turn into one of those cartoon moments where the body dramatically crumples just a second later.

“That was _silver-shot_ ,” Allison hisses.

The face is putting itself back together. That’s a tendon worming its way down the jawbone. Jesus Christ. “I don’t think it gives a shit who it’s related to,” Derek hisses back.

Allison grabs Derek’s elbow again. “Hole’s to the left, go another step over, that’s my bag. Try to grab it for me.”

Derek nods and then they’re out of time as the undead wolf charges them again. It’s only got half an eye but apparently, it doesn’t need the whole thing to go at them.

They go left to avoid the hole and then Derek yanks out of Allison’s grip as a flash of metal catches his eye: the shovel. He grabs it up and goes wide. This time the wolf is going for Allison first, and as it blows by Derek, he brings the shovel’s blade down on the wolf’s neck. Because he does listen to Peter some of the time and neither zombies nor werewolves can get over some injuries, and decapitation’s one of them.

Or not. “ _Really_?” Derek snarls, hopscotching frantically as the now-bodiless head comes snapping at him like some demented wind-up toy. 

He loses his balance again, but still has the shovel, and as the thing gets way too close to his feet, he takes another swing at it. Which connects! 

And then the fucking body shows up and dips to catch the head against its neck stump. What the _fuck_.

“Derek!” Allison shouts. She’s running back up, shotgun broken over her arm. She’s got a handful of something—shells. As soon as she gets within a foot of Derek, she stops and plants her feet and starts trying to reload the gun. “Get back to the car, I’ve got my crossbow in the trunk!”

“Why is that better?” Derek says. Not because he’s trying to be difficult, just because—because the thing puts itself together, so it is a valid fucking question here.

“Because—”

Before Allison can finish, the undead wolf wheels and rears up on its back feet and—and changes. Bulks out, legs twisting as its knees reverse direction, and great. It’s an alpha. It’s an alpha, it’s a zombie, and now it’s going to reach down and grab them both before Allison can get the shotgun back up. She’s trying but she won’t get the barrel up high enough and Derek sees that and thinks he’s going to have to ram the thing in the legs to buy her time and he really doesn’t think he can wrestle it, not at that size. So he’s going to get gutted and _that_ is when something _else_ roars over their heads.

Derek looks up, sees sneaker treads, and looks down and sees the undead alpha toppling backwards into the hole, with another werewolf on top of it. Then an arc of blood flings out and he has to duck under it, and temporarily loses sight of the fighting.

“Scott!” Allison shouts, surprise and relief uppermost in her voice. She gasps and Derek reaches out without thinking to hold her leg, because she sounds so bad he thinks she’s about to faint. But instead of that, she gulps air and her shotgun clicks and then she shouts again, more angrily. “Scott! I need a shot! Scott, you need to move—”

He must do that, because the next thing Derek hears is a shotgun blast. Then Allison tears herself out of his grip and runs forward. Derek gets up then and Scott’s still on top of the undead alpha, holding it down—it’s definitely weaker, with its leg dragging limply out of the hole, but the claws of its hand are sunk deeply into Scott’s shoulder and the blood is running in goddamn rivers down Scott’s arm.

Allison’s gone over by the end of the hole and she’s using the shotgun like a pounding pole, slamming it down on something whenever Scott shifts over. Then she pulls back. There’s stringy stuff hanging out of the end of the barrel makes Derek jerk his eyes away; he ends up spotting the shovel. He scoops it up and twists back and Allison’s just lifting the gun, having knocked the stuff out of the barrel, and she’s aiming back into the hole.

“Wait,” Scott grunts, his voice constricted and muffled. 

His head is mostly below the level of the hole. All Derek can really see are the man’s shoulders, two tight triangles that suddenly spasm. Then still, and then spasm again. For some reason Derek suddenly remembers a moment when he was a kid, crowded onto a couch with Cora and Peter, watching a documentary or something. Anyway, there’d been a wildcat on the screen with some furry thing in its mouth, a squirrel or whatever, and Peter had been telling them it shakes them like that to break spines.

It’s quiet and dark. Shivering himself, Derek jerks his head around and looks up and about, but it’s not—it’s not that kind of dark. Actually, he can see dawn breaking when he looks back towards the cemetery gates, and no out-of-place family members are walking around trying to irritate him into coming over.

“Scott,” Allison says. She sounds harsh too, harsh and strung-out. When Derek looks back, she still has a firm grip on her gun but her jaw is trembling; he can hear her teeth click softly. “Scott…are you—is it—”

The thing moving out of the hole abruptly heaves over the rim, and Derek almost flings the shovel at it. He still ends up having the blade pointed right at Scott’s face when he and Scott’s eyes meet.

Scott stares blankly at Derek for a second. He’s got dirt on his clothes and smeared up his neck and little bits are dropping out of his hair, but his face is oddly clean. That’s the first thought that goes through Derek’s mind and he can’t figure out why. And then, as Scott drags himself the rest of the way from the hole, coughs wetly, and suddenly seizes clumps of grass between his hands, Derek figures it out: no blood. No blood on Scott’s face.

“So…zombie?” Derek says. It would be a really old corpse, if what Allison had been saying earlier was true.

“What?” Allison says. She’s lowered the shotgun but is still standing over the hole, glancing back and forth between it and Scott.

Derek frowns. Then flips the shovel around in his hand so it’s angled better if he has to bash something in. “Is it still not dead?”

“No, I think it is—it’s not putting itself back together anymore,” Allison says.

“Oh, gr—” Derek starts.

A raw, stutter-stop hacking noise interrupts him. It’s so loud and violent that he whips around again, thinking somebody’s driving up on them on a—a fucking snowmobile or something, and yeah, he realizes that’s insane but honestly, it would make just as much sense as anything else here. 

Except it’s not that. They’re alone, and the noise is Scott, emptying out his stomach with a viciousness that’d make Derek wince, if Derek wasn’t already staggering down onto one knee from the sheer stench of what Scott’s throwing up. It’s—it’s black and vile and smells like what comes out when a werewolf’s been poisoned with wolfsbane, except about a thousand times more like rotted shit.

“Oh, God, _Scott_.” Allison puts the shotgun down and takes a frantic step towards the other man. Then backs up, even before Scott makes a half-hearted stay-back swipe at her. She twists around, spots her bag, and dashes over to get it. Then comes back to Scott, who actually twists from her. The look on her face is so bad Derek gets phantom pains, just seeing it.

“What, no, just—just let me—get it all up,” Scott gasps. Then throws up more of that stuff.

Derek huffs out the entire capacity of his lungs, then stuffs his nose in his sleeve. It doesn’t really help. But he breathes in, because he needs to, and then he crouches down and shuffles over to Scott, because…look, the guy obviously just saved their lives. Again. And even if it seems absolutely batshit to him, Derek’s not the kind of asshole who will just run off afterward and not…not sit there and wish he could help, because he has no idea what to do with this. Fuck.

Scott senses him coming and twitches away, then stops when he realizes that’s just going to move him towards Allison. So the man shakes his head instead, only to wince when that sends some of the vomit flying in Derek’s direction. It doesn’t actually hit but the next time Scott glances over, he looks apologetic.

“Just—think I’m almost out,” he mutters. He clearly still wants to keep upchucking, but he makes a visible effort to stop—Derek can see his chest muscles clenching under what’s left of his shirt—and sucks in a couple huge breaths. “Had—eat—heart—”

“The heart? The heart’s what stops that kind of thing?” Derek says. “I thought it was the head.”

“Not—not zombie.” Scott presses his lips together and Derek pulls back, but it’s not because Scott’s about to throw up again. He’s thinking. Then he blows out his breath, frustrated. “I can’t remember what it’s…Stiles is _so_ much better at explaining—”

“Wait, so…so you _knew_ that thing was in there, waiting?” Allison says sharply. “That’s why you didn’t want to help me? Not because you didn’t believe me, but because—”

“Okay, do we really need to have this fight now?” Derek says. Because at least he can put off whatever ongoing personal drama these people constantly seem to be having. He doesn’t need to know what’s going on to know it’s not going to help.

Allison glares at him, but she’s also already unzipping her bag, her attention clearly moving on. She digs around some, then comes up with a little plastic case that she pops open. Inside is a syringe, which she takes out, tests with a professional squirt, and then aims at Scott’s shoulder. “It’s Nine Herbs, it’ll heal him,” she says, as much to Scott as to Derek.

“ _Wait_ ,” Scott says. His head is down again and a convulsion is working its way up his back, seesawing him on his knees till finally he hacks up a couple more mouthfuls.

Then Scott slumps back on his heels, his head hanging almost into the sticky, disgusting ground. Derek breathes through his sleeve again, eyeing him. When Scott doesn’t start to move, Derek gingerly leans over the remaining space and gets a handful of the man’s shirt. Movement off to the side makes Derek look up, but Allison doesn’t look disapproving. If anything, she looks annoyed that Derek stopped, and she nods sharply as she leans down on the other side.

Scott mutters something unintelligible. His eyes are closed. He’s shaking under Derek’s hand, and then he jerks hard, and Derek doesn’t mean to but Scott goes one way and Scott’s shirt stays in Derek’s fist and it rips. Biting back a curse, Derek drops the shirt and instead grabs Scott’s shoulder through the tears. He starts drawing on the pain, seeing as he thinks Scott might be passing out.

Well, Scott is not passing out, and suddenly Derek’s slammed on his back with Scott on top of him, one hand on Derek’s wrist, grinding it into the ground as Scott’s face contorts back and forth between human and shifted. “ _Don’t_ , you’ll just hurt yourself,” Scott snarls.

“I—” _literally just wanted to make you feel better_ , Derek wants to say.

Except Allison stabs Scott in the back with the syringe and now Derek’s got a writhing, semi-conscious alpha holding him down, so all he can do is watch Scott’s eyes roll back into his head. Allison seems to realize this is also a bad idea, but since she’s just as insane as the rest of this town, she grabs Scott’s hips and—doesn’t drag Scott off Derek, because he’s an alpha, and he’s not going anywhere he doesn’t want to go. But she’s there, her freaked-out expression occasionally popping up over Scott’s shoulder. She does help keep Scott up and keep Scott’s chattering teeth away from Derek’s throat.

But honestly, a lot of Derek not getting mauled is down to Scott, who somehow does not actually ever pass out. Derek’s seen Nine Herbs used on a werewolf exactly once in his life, and they had the guy chained down with both Derek’s mother and Peter sitting on the chains, Peter with a goddamn _machete_ at the ready, and that guy didn’t wake up for close to an hour. Scott, on the other hand—every time his head droops, his heartbeat starts to flutter, Derek braces himself for fangs inadvertently planting in his shoulder or chest or arm, but it doesn’t happen.

And then, just as Derek thinks he might as well just pass out himself, the tremors start to slow and Scott’s whites slowly roll back to their normal place. Allison lets out a strangled, half-hopeful, half-desperate sound and Derek hears a thump as she sits hard on the grass by them, and Scott blearily looks down at Derek.

“Are you actually a goddamn werewolf?” Derek has to ask. Because Jesus Christ.

Scott keeps looking at Derek, blinking occasionally, and it slowly dawns on Derek that while Scott might not have lost consciousness, he still might not have a fully-functioning brain. But before Derek can do anything about it, Scott blinks one last time and suddenly somebody’s home.

The next thing Scott does is grimace and let go of Derek’s wrist, and then put his hand back down and touch Derek and black lines start going up over the back of his fingers—Derek jerks his arm away. “What the hell, don’t draw on me, you just ate my zombie greataunt’s heart!”

“But—I didn’t break it, did it?” Scott protests, looking at Derek’s wrist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

Derek uses that arm to half-push himself out from under the other man, then immediately yanks it up against his chest, hissing. Because yeah, it basically feels like somebody pulped it. But it works, and it’s not actually broken, and Scott is—is—Derek can’t even. That’s what Scott is like, he’s reduced Derek to sounding like fucking _Laura_.

“How did you get here?” is what Derek eventually lands on, after Scott just keeps staring at him like Scott’s really, really sorry this all happened, smelling fucking sincere about it.

“I saw you.” Scott looks like this should be pretty obvious, while somehow not being accusing about it. He just sounds confused that Derek isn’t getting it.

“What do you mean—I covered my tracks,” Allison breaks in. She, at least, seems to agree with Derek about what Scott is, given the way she’s looking at him. “I had masking charms on, I put the runes back after I opened the door, I—”

Scott glances over his shoulder at her, then sighs. “No, I mean, I saw you from the road. I wasn’t inside Stiles’ house, I was walking home because Dad—” a tinge of anger leaks into Scott’s scent “—wouldn’t stop trying to call, and I saw you two driving. Then you stopped and I got under the car while you were arguing and grabbed on and—and look, we did lie. We knew you were onto something but the curse was written wrong, it’s actually that that thing would attack no matter what, but only a Hale could open the grave. But we couldn’t have them come back, Allison. That’s what it wants. Them being here only makes it stronger, so we were going to find another way. I know you want your dad, but it’s not going to be that way.”

Allison inhales sharply. A lot of emotions fight over her face, and she even moves to get up and then stops herself twice. Then slumps back, dragging her hair halfway back before tugging it down behind her ears. In the end, she just looks at Scott like she wishes she could slap him and wrap him tight at the same time. “Scott,” she starts. Swallows hard, and starts again. “Scott. I want him back, but I’m not—I’m not _Gerard_. All right? If my dad has to stay with it to kill this thing, I—I know he’d want that, just like—just like you know your mom—your mom would’ve gotten in that car even if she’d known who the driver really was, because she just wanted to keep you safe.”

Scott makes a choked noise in his throat. It’s too low for anyone but another werewolf to hear, but going from the part of his expression that Derek can see, Allison doesn’t need to hear it anyway. And Derek…Derek feels like he keeps walking in and out of somebody else’s movie, and like if somebody doesn’t point him to the real exit, he’s going to kill something. Which maybe is why he says the asshole thing he does: “You did notice we’re already here, right?”

“What?” Scott says, twitching. Then he starts to turn back to Derek. “No, I know, and I heard where you were going and it got Gerard, so it was probably going to come here next. That’s why I let you dig up the grave.”

“Without warning us?” Allison says, back to outraged.

“Well, I thought maybe Stiles was wrong this time. He didn’t think it could get Gerard back here. Didn’t want to lie to you either, just didn’t want you to end up like Mom,” Scott says. He’s weirdly calm.

Which is kind of being an asshole, honestly. Derek opens his mouth to say so and Scott’s eyelids shut and he folds over and his head is laying on Derek’s belly for a good second before Derek fully processes what’s happened.

“He passed out,” Allison says, also staring. She sounds like she might be ready to do that too. Or maybe just burst into hysterical laughter.

She’s just like that for a second. Then she sucks in her breath and reaches over to get Scott by the shoulders, just as Derek gets one of his arms. They both hesitate, and then Derek pushes Scott over while Allison pulls away the rags of his shirt and checks where she stuck him with the syringe. The flesh around it is fading from back, but when Allison takes her hand away, a dark oily film covers her fingers.

“He’s still not great, we need to get him out of here,” she mutters. She bites her lip, then pushes Scott back into Derek. “Get him up. I’m going to check the grave.”

“Yeah, after all that, we’d better get that thing. The crystal whatever,” Derek mutters back.

It does occur to him that they shouldn’t be too sure that his former great-grandaunt’s really down, and he scrambles to get himself and Scott up as Allison goes back to the hole. She’s careful too, grabbing first the shovel, then her shotgun as she goes. When she finally is by the hole again, she uses the shovel to prod around. Then squats down as she spots something.

Derek misses what she does next because Scott is, well, floppy, with limbs that keep dangling and skewing their balance, and Derek’s having a hard time with just one arm. He can’t use the other arm except to press into Scott’s side because his wrist is swollen up now and he can’t bend it. If he could get Scott over one shoulder, that’d work better, but that’s actually hard to do without two functional wrists.

By the time he manages it, Allison is done with the hole and is packing up her bag and the tools. She has an odd look on her face, but when Derek steps back from her, she shakes her head. “I’m not possessed, it’s just—just it’s not a crystal.”

“What?” Derek says. “Did we dig deep enough?”

“I checked with my dowsing rod, there’s nothing else,” she says. “It’s not—I think it’s the right thing, it’s just it’s a—it’s a big iron key.”

Logically—because Derek actually does know how to use that, whatever Peter says—that means the key fits into a lock somewhere. Which means they’re not done yet. Which, again, fuck this place. 

“I don’t know what to do with what’s left there,” Allison goes on, looking over her shoulder. She’s talking about the feet still sticking out of the hole. “I just—I read all of Gerard’s notes. All of them. He was completely insane, you know. And I—I read everything, and put it together, and I just—”

She’s starting to break down, Derek realizes. He can’t really blame her. On the other hand, they just can’t do this right now. And he’s going to say that, and then a third heartbeat suddenly jumps into his ears, barely ten yards away.

“Chill, both of you,” says that Parrish guy. He still keeps his hand on his gun till Allison lowers the shotgun and instead helps keep Scott from sliding off Derek’s shoulder after Derek very justifiably jumped. “I’m not here for a fight. Or, for that matter, grave-robbing, but Jesus, I can’t pick and choose in this job. So just get Scott over here and I’ll give you all a ride before John’s mind completely implodes, all right?”

“What are you doing here?” Allison snaps.

Parrish sighs. “Kali called me.”

Allison does not act like this is a good thing, so Derek stays put.

“Oh, for—yeah, I know, but she told me Scott had messed himself up again and she’s actually right so…do you want to deal with Scott’s father, or do you want John to deal with him?” Parrish says. He takes a step towards them, then turns himself sideways and points back towards the gates. “Because Scott’s two hours late at this point.”

“I think that man deserves Stiles’ father,” Allison says through gritted teeth. But then she looks at Scott again. Worry pushes the hard anger off her face and her eyes slip to meet Derek’s. “Scott does need to rest, and we can’t take him back to Stiles’ place, he’ll just—he’ll make himself go out again, and they won’t stop him. His dad’s a jerk but Scott can heal up there.”

Once again, Derek has no idea what the backstory is here, but he gets the sense he’s not going to like it. But Scott can’t just hang over his shoulder forever, and the guy saved him, and the least Derek can do is get him home. “Okay, fine. Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek is not a complete idiot. But he's also not the Derek who's gone through as much crazy Beacon Hills stuff as anybody else here, so he gets to be the shocked bystander to Scott and Allison's battle-hardened weariness (with a bit of car snob, because you don't drive his car if you really want to stay under the radar).
> 
> I've always wondered why an older born werewolf who's had documented run-ins with hunters would do things like show up at school with a bullet in him and demand that Scott and Stiles help him, after what, three conversations? As if getting bitten is an automatic commitment to help other werewolves? That's just getting everybody in the same place, that's not really consistent Derek characterization. Scott and Allison, however, would totally continue with the everyday good manners in the middle of doomsday, because that's the way they break.
> 
> The show garbles this a lot, but in certain cultures, werewolves, vampires, and witches exist on a continuum rather than being separate types of entities. So when a suspected werewolf dies, it's at high risk of turning into a vampire, and various measures for preventing that include staking the body, burying it face-down, covering the grave with stones, etc. Chaining the body down sometimes comes up.
> 
> Silver is actually not that great for a bullet, if you're talking precision like a rifle. However, shotguns cause damage via scatter, so silver pellets arguably are going to cause more damage when used that way. 
> 
> Allison wants her crossbow because if something keeps regenerating, then you can't just blow it away. You could try pinning it in place, and for that, you need bolts rather than bullets.
> 
> Heart-eating: see Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island vampire.


	11. Chapter 11

The body in the morgue drawer reminds Talia of those old-fashioned puppets in Charles Dickens-type period films, the ones where someone’s striding down a filthy London street while in the background, a booth is holding a slapstick-violent puppet show. It has that same artificial rigidness around the head, the same looseness from the neck down, the skin stretched tight over the skull and then hanging slack from there. Once upon a time the pieces all belonged to Gerard Argent, but other than that, she really can’t say what it is.

“When these first started showing up, we thought maybe vampires.” John barely took a look into the drawer, and it’s not because, as she would’ve assumed, he’d rather watch her reaction. He’d already been turning away as the drawer rolled out and now he’s over at a steel table, leafing through a manila folder. “I know you’re going to say no type of vampire does that to a body, but all we had to go on were the notes we were pulling out of the bags of the Argent hunters we arrested that night.”

“I don’t think I’m really in a position to judge.” Talia doesn’t want to do it, but she makes herself lean over and smell the body.

It’s not—it’s not as bad as her imagination feared. And in an unsettling way, it’s beyond anything her imagination could have come up with. It’s…that the corpse doesn’t really have a smell. No bodily fluids, no scavenging insects, no rot. It’s just…it’s just dry. Dry with the barest hint of human. The closest analogy she can come up with is how the furniture smells in a place that once was lived in, but that hasn’t been lived in for a very long time—and that hasn’t had any other living thing come in, not even rats. Like an abandoned but sealed-off storage unit. If she reaches into there and flicks the head, she wonders if the bones will just rattle softly under the papery skin. 

She pushes herself up straight and moves her head back and forth, trying to reorient herself, and realizes that John’s studying her now. Still over by the table, two fingers slipped into the folder to mark his spot, but his gaze is resting on her.

“We’ll have to head for the house as soon as it’s light, and get the other half back,” he says after a moment.

Talia frowns. “Why? There can’t be anything left—this is the top half anyway, this would be the half with any use. Why would it—I don’t even understand why it’d take the legs. What use are they now?”

“It’s for putting the house back together,” John says. Her expression must say exactly what she’s thinking, because the next thing John does is grimace apologetically. “Yeah, I know. Nothing about this sounds right. But that’s what it’s doing. There’s this law of physics, conservation of matter—”

“I don’t think that’s the odd part. I saw—I saw a movie once. I can’t remember the name, but it worked like that. The house in it was intelligent, and it fed off the people who lived in it in order to restore itself,” Talia says. She pauses, trying to remember more. It’d been a very long time ago, one late night when she’d been up after tending to her children and Peter had been…Peter had been studying for an exam, that was why he’d joined her. He’d made fun of the nonsensical magic—it’d been nonsensical at the time, anyway. “But what I don’t understand—why the house? Why make that your goal? There are so many other buildings around, and if it’s just looking for shelter—”

“That’s not what we think it’s doing,” John says, interrupting. He moves away from the table, then steps back just long enough to shuffle all the papers back into the folder. After tucking the folder under his arm, he comes over and shuts the morgue drawer. Then leans against it, fingers tucked loosely through the handle. “Or what it is—”

“I know, you said it was a demon who’d been shut up in the Nemeton,” Talia snaps.

John’s brows rise slightly, but neither his stance nor his heartbeat changes an inch. Even druids tread lightly around an alpha werewolf—even other alpha werewolves show some sign of recognition. If not intimidation, then at least counter-bluster. But John treating Talia as just mildly annoying is something that she honestly isn’t sure she’s ever come across, outside of her own family. But they’d barely known each other before. Talia had had to call in a favor two steps removed in order to get Peter that damn babysitting job.

“Yeah, and it wants something to do with your house. But whatever it is, it must’ve been destroyed in the fire, since it’s trying to just put the whole thing back together. So you got any ideas?” he asks, in the same tone as somebody asking for change.

This has nothing to do with Talia’s pride, and everything to do with protecting her family. So as much as John is getting under her skin, it has to just—stop. Stop. “You must have some,” she says, after a moment and a deep breath. “You’ve been fighting this for years, from the sound of things.”

Emotion finally flickers to life in John’s eyes, and it’s anger. “I think it had a list, and it’s still going down the names. It’s not the house, it’s who wasn’t—”

“Are you saying it’s our fault for not _staying_?” Talia snarls, her new-made vow immediately going by the wayside.

“What?” John says. “No. Jesus, if it was that easy, I would’ve shown up on your doorstep years ago.”

Talia clamps her lips down on the first reply that springs to mind. Clamps down on the urge to leap at the man too, the twitching in her legs that’s telling her just jump claws-out, the door’s right behind him, jump and leave him behind, broken and bleeding, and get her family and just get out. She can’t beat it that way. 

She can’t beat it at all, a little voice in her head says. She clamps down on that too.

John’s looking at her, his expression…not exactly softening, but cooling off. It wasn’t her he was angry at, she suddenly realizes. And then, before she can figure out whether he’s just detached or is truly sympathetic, he abruptly turns away from the wall of drawers. “Look, just so we’re straight on it—I don’t blame your family. And I’m not carrying a grudge against your brother. Honestly, some days I think it would’ve been better if he’d just took—”

“The whole thing was my idea anyway,” Talia blurts out. “Watching your son. I came up with it, I talked Peter into doing it.”

“Yeah?” John says absently, only half-looking at her. He takes a step towards the door and then fully looks at her. “Not a natural babysitter, is he?”

She’s supposed to go out first, says his body posture. Her shoulder-blades prickle but she goes ahead, and makes it look natural. “Oh, he’s better than anyone thinks, Peter included. He basically raised my three children with me. They complain a lot about it, but at the end of the day, they wouldn’t have made it to adulthood without him.”

John nods as if he’s thinking about something else, but the dark circles under his eyes and the puffy eyelids don’t hide how attentive his gaze is. “You know, these days I’d pay him to get Stiles out of this place.”

The flat way he keeps delivering lines like that isn’t in the least bit casual either. “Is he who the demon’s after?”

“No. Not really—it’s not him…not him as a _person_ , I think,” John says, and a hint of bitterness does twist the ends of his words, just enough for Talia to guess at how much more John’s holding back. “He and me, we can do the same thing.”

“Can’t be fooled by it?” Talia says. Lightly, with her eyes peeled for the second those silvery tattoos start crawling over the man’s skin.

But they don’t show. John just looks like a tired, frustrated, middle-aged man as he leads them down the hall to the elevator. “He calls it a null effect. We break the illusion. The demon’s still not at full strength, so it’s mostly mind-games. Mostly. If you let it get close enough to touch, it can take anybody down.”

“Well, so how are you planning to get into the house and get Gerard’s legs back before they turn into an armchair?” Talia asks.

“What?” John says, and curtly enough that she thinks she was too quick with the flippancy. But then he snorts and just pushes the button for the elevator. “Oh, we have that figured out. The thing’s always down the morning after—too full, or something like that, I guess. If Stiles and I go, and we put down a truckload of counter-charms, we’ve got about ten minutes. It still would’ve gotten a couple shutters out of Gerard by then, but the more we can slow it down…”

“The more time you can buy to figure out how to destroy it?” Talia says.

John doesn’t immediately answer her. They’ve both gotten into the elevator and he pressed for the floor, and when she glances over, she only now realizes he hadn’t hit for the lobby. She stiffens and he looks almost sympathetic again.

“We’re just going to see Deaton. The vet you were going to meet,” John explains. Then stifles a yawn into the back of his hand, before dragging his fingers back through his hair. “You know, we tried burning the damn thing again. The house, I mean.”

“I take it that failed,” Talia says.

John grimaces. Rubs at his face again, then turns sharply towards her, just as the doors chime open. “If it was just putting the goddamn thing up again, anybody would do, right? But it’s not just anybody. People get over there all the time because of those goddamn ghost forums and we pick them up on the road around the preserve, and they might have mush for brains, but they’re alive. They’re not like Gerard there.”

He holds her gaze for a long moment, angry and bitter. Then he twists away, shoving his arm out to catch the doors as they start to close. He walks out and then looks back for her.

After a second, she follows slowly. “So it’s just the people who were around that night?”

“You think so?” John mutters.

But she isn’t what is eating him alive, isn’t the canker causing the running sores that keep flaring up. She gets that now and it prompts her to push him a little more, to see whether she can get him to finally give her something she can use. She’s still going to get the backlash, just because she’s here, but backlash is a dead-end for John and she knows she can wait something like that out. “It wants my family, or something about my family. That’s what you think. And it took the Argents, and of the other people the first time you tried to exorcise it, you’re the only one left.”

Oddly, John flinches. Immediately afterward he stops and then backtracks to a door on the left, so it could have just been him realizing he’d overshot his destination, but Talia doesn’t think the scent matches up. The man doesn’t smell the least bit uncertain.

“The theory is, your family built something into the house, or put something in it, that’s going to help this thing break free. I think Stiles probably is onto something there, because the house does change. Little things, like the weathervane, the style of the shutters.” John puts his hand on the knob of the door, but doesn’t go into the room. He does peek into the glass window before turning back to Talia. “It’s like it can’t figure out exactly how the house is supposed to be.”

“If you have photos or sketches, or can just remember, we could try and pinpoint that,” Talia says. “We have been here for over a hundred years, I don’t know if you knew—”

“Stiles is on that. He’s practically got a museum exhibit on his computer, trying to track it all,” John says.

His tone is strange. Vicious—resentful, Talia thinks. Of his own son?

“Look, the thing is—it’s not just the people who were there that night. We know that. It’s the people—the people who know something about your house, period. Like Deaton there, he didn’t show up till Stiles was in high school but the house was after him right away,” John adds, his voice both rising and speeding up. Then he catches himself with a grimace, taking a breath; it’s like he knows how oddly he’s behaving, and suddenly, cares about how that looks to Talia. “Deaton and his sister, they have their own ideas.”

Talia can’t help a dry smile. “Druids tend to.”

John lifts his brows and she can see a shadow of humor in his eyes. Sickly but there, and for a second she thinks they might have something in common. “Yeah, well…your family didn’t have one way back when you first got here, so they’re guessing too. And anyway, that’s all just about how the thing can get strong enough. It’s not really about what it’s after, once it is at full strength.”

“Well, I’d imagine it’s the usual things that demons want: murder and mayhem, everyone’s worst impulses running wild. They’re pretty predictable, for all the chaos they can cause,” Talia says.

The humor in John’s face fades. “No, it’s not that. I told you, this one’s different. And I know that because it’s…because I can do what I can do, because I’m like it. I—I _am_ it, all right? This magic shit I can do—it’s that _thing’s_ magic. That’s why your daughter’s scared of me.”

He holds her gaze again, and this time there isn’t a speck of heat in it of any kind. Not even the frantic adrenaline of fear. Just cold, clear knowledge.

When he looks away, sighing, she thinks he’s trying to be polite. In an offbeat, twisted way, she suddenly thinks, he’s just been trying to be polite this entire time. He’s been here for fourteen years, but the madness hasn’t infected him so much that he can’t remember how outsiders will see this, and he’s smart enough to know that handling things how he is, with that mundane, flat attitude, is the only way he’ll be able to keep people from running screaming out of this town for long enough to actually explain.

“You’re still in control of yourself,” Talia says after she’s collected her thoughts. He frowns at her, finally looking confused, and she gestures between them. “This isn’t an illusion—the smells are all right. What that demon does, nothing has a smell. It’s all dead. When you do it, I still smell everything. So this—this is real.”

“That’s what you have to say?” John says, voice thick with disbelief.

“Well, what did you want? Me to leave again?” Talia says sharply.

“It wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world,” John says. His posture slumps slightly. He glances at the room again, then at her. “Look. I’ll see that you all get out. But take Stiles with you this time. This bullshit with the demon, he’s been—this is practically his entire life, has been his life for pretty much as long as he can remember, and I just can’t—”

“When you said he’s like you, you meant it about having the same powers, too, right?” Talia says. “That’s why you’re so sure Peter is fine?”

John flinches violently, to the point that Talia takes a step back from him. He pulls back and wraps his hand around the door knob, knuckles whitening; he looks sorry for a second, sorry for scaring her. “He’s better than this. He’s got better fights to fight than this,” he says after a long silence. “The only reason he’s still here is because that thing took his mother, but that’s my fault, not his. He wasn’t even—him and Scott, they weren’t anywhere near the house. We dropped them both off with the same babysitter when we tried to—when Claudia tried to exorcise that thing.”

Talia had had a feeling, but still, hearing it from John is…is…she’s not comfortable with it, whatever it is. When he turns away and finally opens the door, she lets out her breath. He doesn’t mean to, actually, but he is scaring her.

She looks into the room to buy some time. It’s a private double, but only one of the beds is occupied. Alan Deaton is younger than she thought—not even John’s age. She can make out that much from all the tubes and wires and bandages swathing him.

“The druids,” John says. Waits out Talia’s start. “If they’re right, then when the demon’s at full strength, it’s going to have to—it’ll take back whatever the hell this is, that I have. This magic. It’ll take it from Stiles too, but he’s young, he’ll adjust. Me, I’m just…I’ve done this for fourteen years. I don’t know what the hell will be left of me, and anyway, that shouldn’t be Stiles’ problem.”

Talia whips around to stare at him. “I thought the idea was to _not_ feed it.”

John stares at her, so blankly that it’s reassuring—he genuinely wasn’t thinking that way. Then he gets what she means, and snorts. “Oh, hell, absolutely not. It already took my wife, I’m not giving it one more goddamn thing. But that’s why I want my son out of town.”

She only thinks about it for a second. “All right,” she says.

He relaxes. His body does—he’s still watching her. He wants to be reassured, but he’s just been here so long, says his stare. “Just like that?”

“I don’t know—what do you want me to say? That this is going to be a pain? That I didn’t sign up for this? That I’m mad you’re strongarming me over my family?” Talia says, not able to hold back all of her irritation. “Which is all true, but it’s also all just—irrelevant, isn’t it? You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t know as well as I do what my answer’s going to be. So let’s not waste time being angry about it, and move onto why I’m bothering in the first place: how the hell we get rid of this thing so we _can_ leave.”

“I guess…” John’s brow furrows “…I kind of remembered you were blunt, but you’re still…you’re still taking this better than I would. Than I used to.”

Talia sighs, and suddenly, _she’s_ tired. Her bones ache, and it takes all of her willpower to not just yawn in the man’s face, not out of bad manners but because she just really, really needs to. “This is insane. Fine. I’ll work with that. That’s how you survive.”

John studies her for a few seconds. Almost asks her something, then just limits himself to a shake of the head. He glances to the side—checking a clock on the wall—and then points to the free bed. “I have to talk to a couple people, get them ready for when we’re back with the rest of Gerard,” he says. “It’ll probably be an hour. Get some sleep. Everybody who works this floor has some idea of what’s going on and they’re not going to bother you. I’ll come pick you up when it’s time to go to the preserve.”

“You look like you could use a nap too,” Talia says as he turns to leave. She’s not entirely sure why; she doesn’t really want to spend more time with him, even if she understands him better now. Maybe it’s just the fear in her, clinging at whatever shred of familiarity she can find. “You can’t just stay up all night.”

“Yeah, well, been doing that for fourteen years too,” John mutters.

He ignores her and steps out of the room. As soon as his footsteps fade, Talia goes over and tries the door, which opens just fine. She closes it since there’s a nurse or someone walking around just a corridor over, and then…then she takes the empty bed. It is there, after all, and not using it doesn’t help her or her family.

Not that she really expects to sleep.

* * *

Talia ends up closing her eyes, not because she’s trying to force herself to take a nap but because otherwise she’d just be taking out her phone and staring at it and putting it back in her pocket. She knows she can’t make a call on it and it’s driving her crazy. She’s not even that into things like social media or apps, aside from that one time Peter got her temporarily obsessed with that ridiculous zombie farm game, and yet she has to literally press her hand under her cheek to keep from reaching for her phone.

She still doesn’t fall asleep. The moment those footsteps slow in front of the door, she has eyes on it and is pulling her arms under herself in case she needs to do anything.

Marin Morrell walks into the room, sipping at what smells like the most glorious cup of coffee in the world. She takes one step towards the other bed, then pivots sharply. And stumbles hard, barely getting a hand out in time to grab the bedrail, when she sees Talia.

Honestly, Talia hadn’t been expecting her either. Werewolf senses only work as well as the brain they’re attached to, and clearly, if Talia is fetishing coffee that’s probably from the nearest nurses’ station, she’s not at the top of her mental game. God, it’s been a long night.

“John brought you,” Marin says after a second. She pushes herself off of the bed. Her hand drops to her hip, then comes back up to wrap around her midriff. “Did he want you to see my brother?”

Then, before Talia can answer, Marin snorts and shakes her head, and goes around to the other side of the bed. She drops briefly out of sight, accompanied by the distinctive plastic creak of a faux-leather cover, and then she lets out an annoyed, pained noise. Talia gives into her curiosity and sits up, and finds the other woman sprawled out in a chair, so low that her head barely clears the railing around her brother’s bed.

“Of course not. He hates druids,” Marin mutters. She’s looking at the far wall. “You know, we left after you did. There wasn’t a pack anymore, so no need for an Emissary. We didn’t have to come back.”

“So why did you?” Talia asks.

Marin flicks a glance at her, then resumes staring at the wall. She’s still wearing the clothes that she had had on earlier, though her hair is neatly brushed and it looks like she’s touched up her make-up as well. “Because that thing in your house killed a druid.”

“Kali’s Emissary?” Talia guesses. 

“You kept track?” Marin says, starting to look over. Then she jerks her head back. “No, John told you that too, didn’t he? When you left this town, you really left it.”

“Well, I wasn’t aware that I had any reason to stick with it,” Talia says, unable to bite back her sarcasm. She isn’t so dependent on druids and Emissaries as many alphas are, but she doesn’t normally hate them either. She just doesn’t like other people doing her thinking for her. Tyler sometimes oversteps but generally he keeps that in mind; Marin, on the other hand, keeps assuming things with a dismissive air that makes Talia’s hand itch. “For that matter, my parents were still alive at that point, and they didn’t want to come back either.”

Marin opens her mouth, then closes it. Then opens it again, and leaves it open for a few second. She’s tensed up as well, and looks so odd that Talia’s reluctantly wondering if she should check that the woman isn’t choking. But then, finally, a sound comes from her: it’s a strangled, disbelieving laugh.

“Nobody _wanted_ you back, Alpha Hale. It’s not about that—packs come and they go, and we try to keep them from leaving the bodies where it’ll give us _all_ away, but it wasn’t that we needed _you_ here,” Marin sputters. She spits out another curt laugh, then slumps back. Her head goes back so she’s staring at the ceiling. “But if you’d just _taken_ care of it before you’d left…if you’d even just told somebody how. So many people would have lived…my own brother wouldn’t be in this bed here, with a broken skull.”

“Wait a second,” Talia snaps, swinging her legs off the bed. “Wait. Are you—are you honestly blaming me for letting this demon loose? Because let me make something clear, _druid_ —”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Marin blinks a little slowly as Talia stalks around the bed, and doesn’t immediately reach into her pocket, or make any other move for a druid trick. She only starts up when Talia’s heel catches loudly against the floor, and then it’s as if she hadn’t noticed how close Talia was until right then, despite Talia being directly in front of her. “That’s not—didn’t they tell you what’s going on yet? About the demon and—”

“The demon and my house and the fuck-up that the Argents made of all of it when they tried to kill us. The _Argents_ ,” Talia snarls. “Them. Not us. And if you didn’t know that, maybe you’re the one who needs to get up to speed.”

Marin still looks puzzled, though her scent is, much to Talia’s gratification, considerably more fearful now. “No, they weren’t here for that. I mean they weren’t here to kill you.”

They stare at each other for a few seconds—a couple minutes. The fear in Marin’s scent abruptly peaks, then fades off into sour fatigue; she twitches in her chair, her eyes widening and then closing as she decides she doesn’t care about Talia’s reaction to what’s obviously a cramp working itself out. Her head slides down the chair a little, and then she sighs and brings her cup up for a sip.

“It wasn’t about you, that night,” she says quietly. “You don’t trust druids, because you don’t think we have your best interests at heart. We don’t, but not because we hate you. Because we want to look after everything supernatural, not just werewolves.”

Talia moves back a few inches, so that she’s no longer within lunging distance. When the other woman looks up at her, she leans one hip against the bed. “I think we can agree to disagree on that point. If you explain yourself.”

“The explanation is what I said,” Marin says, annoyingly, before heaving another sigh and showing she has some common sense under that cryptic bullshit. “They might have killed you if they’d found you, and that’s probably what some of the hunters thought, but it wasn’t the point. The point was to just get you out of way so that Gerard could try his ritual. He’d done his research, just like we had—he knew it was really this place, and not your family.”

“If that’s so, then it’s still on his head and not mine,” Talia says.

Marin snaps her head up. She stares at Talia for a long time, unmoving except for one arm that goes out so she can rest her hand on Deaton’s arm. She’s still afraid of Talia. And angry, in the seething way that only one too afraid to do anything real about it can be. But there’s something else in her eyes, too—something just creeping into them, something more jagged than either fear or anger. Humor.

“You don’t even know,” she says at last. Her fingers tighten around Deaton’s arm, and then she abruptly stands. She’s off-balance and has to right herself with the help of the bedrail, which she does carelessly enough that she ends up banging her heel back into the leg of her chair. It makes her grimace, but she keeps going and pushes by Talia to toss her empty cup into a trashcan by the door. “You don’t know—I’d ask how you don’t know, but this town…I told Alan not to come. I told him, look at Julia, she thought she could handle it, and we can’t even find her spirit. But him, he was reading up, he talked to the last Emissary who really lived here, he just—he wanted to make sure somebody knew. ‘We can’t just sit here and let them figure it out by dying,’ he’d say to me. ‘Not when we can tell them.’”

“Tell them _what_ ,” Talia demands, her patience rapidly running out. “Tell me what? Because this right now? This isn’t exactly helping your brother—”

“Well, nothing’s going to help him now! His skull’s fractured, they put him in a coma to keep the swelling down in case we can still wake him— _wake_ him, the doctors say.” Voice rich with contempt, Marin jerks her head to the side and mimics spitting at someone. Then she twists back around and falls into the chair, arms hanging straight out over the armrests, staring bitterly up at Talia. “Wake him to what? To this demon’s idea of home sweet home? And all because your family can’t remember the way you killed to make this town yours to begin with!”

Talia closes her mouth. She’d like to not—she’d like to say something to the other woman. To say a lot of things, honestly, but none of them are really right, or deserved. And that’s what really burns, she thinks. She’s not as benevolent as her reputation makes out, and she doesn’t mind when Peter goads her about it because they both know she doesn’t care. She has her priorities and they come first. If she can accomplish those, and has the time and the freedom, sure, she might take on a charity case. She can, and she doesn’t mind. But only if she gets all of her priorities locked down first.

Which is why she can’t say anything to Marin. Who hasn’t even bothered to watch for Talia’s reaction, but instead has rolled her head over to stare at her brother again. The anger’s out of Marin’s face and now she just looks…she looks like she’s grieving. Deaton’s basic vitals are strong, as far as Talia can tell, but then, werewolf senses can’t really tell you much about the mind.

“They don’t want to move him,” Marin says after a moment. “Minimizes brain damage. I can’t even—all the things I know, all the magic, and I can’t do anything. This is my brother, but I can’t. Not if I want him to wake up him. All I can do is sit here and wait for that demon to come.”

“It was a long time ago, and the house burned down and I thought—I thought that was all of it. I thought it went with the house,” Talia says. When Marin looks at her, she makes herself look back. “I thought it all burned down. It was _gone_ , so why would—and if you’ve told the people here about it, why haven’t they found it yet?”

Marin’s lips thin, and for a moment Talia thinks they’re just going to keep going. Yes, Talia had forgotten about it, but no, Talia hadn’t known the demon was actually _rebuilding the house_. And Talia will admit to failing on the first point, but on the second, she’s prepared to push right back about how in hell she was supposed to know.

But Marin doesn’t go there. Instead she just puts her hand to her face and rubs tiredly at it. “We only told John Stilinski,” she says, her mouth twisting. “Alan’s idea, again. Because of what that means for John’s son—Alan wanted to put the choice to just him. And he didn’t want to do it, and told us if we told anyone else, he’d personally feed us to the house. He wanted to find another way.”

“What choice?” Talia says, frowning. “Wait—are we talking about the same—”

“It’s about family,” Marin says wearily. “Family to cast the spell. Family to make the sacrifice. And John didn’t want to give up Stiles—”

“Well, if you told him the way to kill it was to kill his only child, of course he wouldn’t!” Talia snaps. She stares at the woman, then takes a step back. Then stops and stares at Marin again. “What is _wrong_ with—this is why druids have their reputation, I hope you realize. Because I’d damn well take the third option too.”

And that’s about as much as Talia can take of the woman. Yes, that’s Marin’s brother in that bed, and yes, Talia can understand Marin might not be quite in her right senses right now. But there’s grief and there is coldblooded apathy, and Talia doesn’t even know John’s son, aside from a vague memory of an enormous-eyed toddler, and she’s already back on John’s side.

Talia storms out of the room, ready to just take her chances with the hospital staff, and nearly reaches the end of the corridor before she realizes she’s being followed. Apparently, she’s just not paying attention period.

“You seemed like you needed to work something out. I can wait a couple minutes,” Kali says, from a few yards further down the hall.

Talia glares at her. Notes the woman’s no longer an alpha, and adjusts her posture accordingly.

“Just wanted to mention, Julia heard that theory too and she wasn’t a fan,” Kali says after a moment. She doesn’t lower her head, but she’s sloping along close to the wall, keeping as much space between herself and Talia as she comes closer. “The child sacrifice idea. It’s not that she was squeamish, because she wasn’t, but she dug a lot deeper into blood magic than most druids and it didn’t match up. That stuff has its own rules you have to follow.”

“I’m aware,” Talia says. She starts to ask Kali what Julia’s theory was, then changes her mind. It doesn’t really matter, after all, except to satisfy Talia’s curiosity and that is _not_ a priority. “What’s your interest here?”

Kali smiles, amused without any lightness to it. She’s not at her peak but is obviously not a pushover, despite the loss of status—and in this town, that likely puts her near the top. It’s interesting that she’s still so wary. “Am I supposed to be flattered you didn’t throw in the ‘omega,’ Talia?”

“You can be flattered I’m not going to bother negotiating,” Talia says. “I’m busy. Talk or walk.”

“I’ll stay, thanks. This place is one of the few places in town we’ve never seen the thing come—it had to get Scott McCall’s mother out of here to get her,” Kali says. She glances up and around the hall, then returns her gaze to Talia. “I wasn’t so deep into the magic as Julia, but if I had to guess, it’s because of the babies. Life, death, opposites repel, all that.”

Talia rolls her eyes and turns to go.

“I bit that kid, you know. Scott. Him and a bunch of his friends,” Kali says. She makes an odd, cut-off noise, like she changed her mind about chuckling, and instead just shakes her head. “They were really just there. Out in the woods where they shouldn’t have been, trying to help that Stiles kid. He wasn’t telling them everything yet so it was easy to get them off on their own, and I needed the bodies. Julia wasn’t dead yet and I was still thinking like an alpha, just build the pack back up, get strong.”

“Bittens tend to make that mistake,” Talia says after a moment. She watches the muscles in Kali’s jaw clench. “Forgetting pack doesn’t end, or start, with the bite.”

“Well, it’s not like I can make that mistake again, is it?” Kali snorts. Gives her hair a rake back from her face, then lifts her head and gives Talia the kind of look that says she knows it could be worse, and she’s expecting that from Talia. “Scott’s the one who lived. He was the last one I would’ve bet on—but it’s him, and he pushed himself to alpha to boot. That’s some kind of legacy, even if I’m not an alpha now.”

“A legacy usually means you planned for it to happen,” Talia observes. “That sounds like a stretch to me.”

Kali’s eyes flash and for a second she acts like an alpha. But before Talia even has to curl up a lip, the other woman’s slumping back. “It’s better than a morgue full of dead bodies, and not even a hope of a vendetta,” she says. She looks at Talia for another moment, then turns away. “Stilinski’s out in the parking lot. He wasn’t going to take you to the house, are you kidding? He’s worse than these druids, thinking it’s just his problem, just because his wife’s the first one who they didn’t get out of there. If you run—”

Talia’s already halfway to the stairs. But it’s not because of Kali’s words—it’s because of Morrell’s. She knows now what John’s thinking, and what’s more, she knows he’s dead wrong. She just has to get to him before he makes it real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The movie Talia is referring to is [Burnt Offerings](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074258/), which is a solid pre-slasher genre B-grade horror movie.
> 
> The zombie farm game is real.
> 
> I can't give the druids a pass, since their canonical actions repeatedly put teenagers and non-knowledgeable people into danger that could have been avoided, or at least lessened, if they were just upfront about what they know. But you can have a shitty agenda and still have human, relatable moments, and acknowledging that doesn't necessarily have to be the same as absolving someone of wrongdoing. I also think it would have been nice if we'd seen Deaton and Morrell actually act like siblings, rather than just being told they're related.
> 
> In the show, magic seems to be okay with the physical healing, but doesn't seem to do anything about mental healing (seeing as Gerard's Gerard, with or without cancer, etc.). So I'm postulating that even though Marin could use something like Nine Herbs, it would just make Deaton a physically fit vegetable (which would be pretty problematic if you had magical power and weren't aware of what you were doing), and the only way to see whether his brain will heal is to let nature take its course.
> 
> ...so Kali's the used-to-be-alpha, now-beta who lurks around dropping dubious tidbits. Well, Peter's off being Annoyed Good, somebody had to be the resident Chaotic Evil.


	12. Chapter 12

Something that becomes immediately apparent when Peter studies the photos is that the house is jumbling multiple periods together. Most of it dates from the version he lived in, but he can pick out older elements here and there. Unfortunately, the older parts aren’t consistently from the same period, and in fact, one photo of the living room shows a fireplace coexisting with a bookcase that actually replaced it. At least as far as he can remember, and it’s been a long night and he’s still recovering from a bad beating and honestly, architecture was never one of his interests.

This isn’t going to get solved from his memory alone, Peter finally acknowledges. He’s going to have to consult a few things, and moreover, is going to have to try and remember which records he’ll need to pull. If they even have them, seeing how little they were able to take when they’d fled the first night—is the demon reconstituting the family albums too?

It’s a ridiculous thought, and it’s a sign that Peter needs to stop for now and get some rest. He types up a last handful of notes to remind him of where he left off, then looks up to find dawn is crawling through the eastern windows and Stiles is gone.

Well, just from the kitchen. Peter only needs a second to track the other man’s heartbeat to…the bathroom floor, where Stiles is curled up with his head pressed into a crumpled towel. The other man’s changed his clothes and washed off Peter’s blood, and now that Peter thinks about it, he can recall an absentminded exchange about odors and distracting from research. It looks as if Stiles dozed off in the middle of drying himself.

Without thinking about it, Peter reaches down for the other man and before he can touch Stiles’ shoulder, Stiles has his wrist in a tight grip and is staring up at Peter with silvered eyes—it’s like a metallic haze over them, with dark brown irises still visible behind it, dark and deep as the plunge into the earth, down, down into the tunnels with the smell of damp moss and pine needles all around—

“Shit,” Stiles says. There’s a sharp _snap_ in front of Peter, making him flinch, and then he realizes the pressure around his wrist is gone. Stiles is staring up at him, lip caught under a front incisor, expression half-guilty, half-annoyed. “Sorry. I usually try not to sleep in front of people.”

“It wasn’t horrifying,” Peter says, still not thinking. His nose is still full of the scents of loam and mushrooms and growing wood, and he means what he says. It hadn’t been. The woods aren’t usually a place of fear for his kind, and he, like any other werewolf, revels in them. Usually.

Stiles presses his lips together, then snorts and levers up on his elbow. He looks at Peter again, annoyance clearly growing, and then gives Peter a shove on the chest. Then he gets to his feet; he’s moving with the speed of someone suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. “Yeah, well, it never is at the beginning. So what are we looking at? Edwardian? Victorian? Frontier classic?”

It’s a moment before Peter remembers what Stiles is referring to. He moves further back, till he’s at the sink, and knocks the tap on with the back of his hand before splashing a little water over his face. He’s got the start of a headache too, he realizes, and cups some water to his mouth in case it’s because of dehydration. “I’m not sure yet. There are a lot of…do you have any idea what period it might be looking for?”

“Whatever period is gonna give it the tools to finish turning us all into puppety bags of bones,” Stiles says. He flicks the towel off the floor, one corner snapping at Peter, and then folds it very neatly and precisely over a nearby wall bar. He even makes sure that the embroidered decoration is centered. Then he wheels around, clearly about to unload more sarcasm, and…doesn’t. “You look pretty terrible.”

He’s merely being honest, as a glance up into the mirror confirms. Peter might not have any visible injuries, but he has the ashy complexion of someone who’s drawn down all his reserves. “I made a few notes, but I wasn’t—I haven’t gotten through everything you have yet,” he says. Debates for a moment about how much more to admit. “I don’t have a photographic progression of the house in my head either. I can’t date some of the historical features without looking them up. And some of them don’t seem to be constantly there, if you’ve—”

“Yeah, I noticed. I—oh, I should’ve showed you, I have a tracker about what pops up the most,” Stiles says.

He leaves the bathroom. Peter leans over the sink for another moment, listening as the other man goes to the kitchen and gets on the laptop and starts typing. He drinks a few more handfuls of water, mops at his face with a towel. Goes to the doorway and pauses, listening to the soft click of the keyboard. From here, he can see Stiles’ back curving over the island.

Peter can also see the air mattress. The area around it has been cleaned up, and it looks like Stiles even threw a fresh sheet over it, and…Peter goes to the mattress. He knows his limits, and right now, his limits say he needs at least one good, solid REM sleep cycle, whatever the situation or Stiles’ research habits think.

It does occur to him, right as he’s drifting off, that dreaming is one step away from the demon’s illusion powers, and that causing an illusion is what Stiles was probably referring to. And it’s not that Peter’s really that careless, or that self-destructive, but he is _tired_.

Anyway, he doesn’t dream. Not as far as he can tell. When he lifts his head several hours later, he knows he’s slept because his mouth has that characteristic sour, stale taste, while the pervasive soreness of partial healing runs throughout the rest of his body. He needs a good minute to push himself to a sitting position and let the muddy, thick feeling fade from his head, too; intellectually, he knows he’s more refreshed than before, but physically, he feels worse. He hates that.

Someone is still in the kitchen, typing, and at first Peter is incredulous. But then he realizes it isn’t Stiles.

“He’s not abandoning you, so don’t bother making a scene,” Lydia says as Peter comes into the room. She’s on a different laptop and has several folders out on the counter. When he starts flipping through them—they’re police forms of various types, all partly filled out for a ‘death by misadventure’ for a male aged sixty to seventy—she gives him a dirty look, and then flicks one perfect pink nail towards the other end of the kitchen. “You can go and see for yourself.”

“Or how about you stop making me nap and why are _you_ still shirtless?” Stiles says, stomping back into the room. At least up till his eyes staying glued to Peter means his neck can’t rotate any farther, and he ends up ‘oofing’ himself against the end of the counter. “Is this some kind of weird werewolf tactic? Like when you told me good little boys dump their peas down their pants because eating too much will make it come out of their ears?”

Peter blinks. “I said what?”

“And I ate all of it, and I have _never_ liked peas since,” Stiles goes on. “Also, why would you actually want peas coming out of your ears?”

Lydia sighs and reaches down into a bag by her chair. She retrieves a floppy plastic-wrapped thing that she hands to Peter. “This is why you needed a nap,” she says to Stiles. “You can’t defeat her by staring at him.”

It’s a shirt. Quite decent quality, and when Peter pulls it on, he notes that the sizing is almost perfect. Which reminds him. “Please tell me somebody collected my rental car and all the luggage in it. I had some very powerful magical tools in there that I don’t think we want the demon to have.”

“I’m not staring!” Stiles says. “I’m just—just acknowledging he’s a lot bigger than the last time I saw him.”

A moment of silence. Then Lydia shuts her laptop. “I can’t save you all the time,” she mutters. “Look, I have a decent start on Gerard’s autopsy paperwork but you need to get your dad to answer the phone before I can finish it. I called Tara, he’s not at the station, and Jordan’s dealing with something for Scott.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Stiles mutters back. He at least is healthy enough to flush, and flush he is, from his hairline down into his shirt-collar. He rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I mean—he has _arms_ now.”

“I had arms back then, too,” Peter muses, unable to help himself. He really, honestly, truly understands they all have better things to do, but Stiles’ reactions are irresistibly absurd. If he didn’t react to them, he’d know for sure he’s not himself. “I do remember that.”

“I’m very sure. Also, just so you know, the last time Stiles hooked up with an older guy, the demon got into his head, and when we got it _out_ , he blamed Stiles and attempted to frame him for two murders and I had to ruin his credit rating, his professional career, and his World of Warcraft ranking,” Lydia says. She slips off her chair, collects her laptop and folders, and then swans out of the room. “Just keep that in mind. Both of you.”

Stiles opens his mouth and takes half a step after her, then sighs. Then turns around, starts a little at seeing Peter, and briefly renews his flush before he sighs again. He gestures vaguely towards the living room. 

“Sorry, I don’t really have a normal sleep cycle, so I forget sometimes that most people need one,” he says. “My laptop’s in there, if you want to go back to figuring this out. You know, if Lydia hasn’t, um, spooked you out of it. She’s actually…basically like that all the time.”

“She’s hardly scarier than the demon,” Peter says.

He does mean it, but even to his ears, he doesn’t sound that enthusiastic. Not that this is a situation calling for gusto, or that he even needs to prove himself to anybody in this town, but…Lydia is just exceptionally irritating, he decides. She might not terrify him, but she certainly knows how to suck out even the slightest bit of enjoyment.

“Well, after you,” Stiles says, waving his hand again. Then, contradicting himself, he ambles into the other room and gets to the couch first. “Oh, and yeah, your car. We got it—I mean, Jordan—he’s one of my dad’s deputies, sorry, you don’t know anybody now. Anyway, he texted that somebody drove it over to my house.”

“How do you know it was really him?” Peter says, sitting down next to Stiles. “Are you warding the phones? Or can you just work out a code?”

Stiles stops with his hand on the half-open laptop. He frowns down at the table, then hisses and jerks his head and twists sharply away, diving for a bag at the far end of the couch. A second later, he’s handing Peter a phone. 

“No, you can’t always trust a code. If it gets near enough, like sight-range, it can read your mind. Here, sorry, I forgot but we got you one,” he says. Then he goes back to the laptop and starts shuffling between several spreadsheets.

Peter turns the phone over in his hand. It’s obviously new, out of the box but still with the protective clingfilm on it. He doesn’t see any markings or modifications, but…he sniffs. Then lifts it up to his nose and sniffs again.

“We ran through literally every demon-proofing spell out there,” Stiles says. When Peter looks up, the other man’s watching him closely, shoulders tensed despite the hand casually splayed over the laptop keyboard. “It’s not pure demon anymore, so holy water, consecrated oil, all that…it just slows it down, but it doesn’t keep it all the way out. Not forever. And you just need one text or call.”

“You must be constantly on edge,” Peter says. Then does his own observing as Stiles tries and fails to hide a start; he’s curious as to what kind of reaction Stiles thought he was going to have. Contesting Stiles’ expertise? With druids in the neighborhood, that seems likely, but Stiles hadn’t just been waiting to argue. The man had been too defensive for that. “And it’s nocturnal, too.”

Stiles laughs humorlessly. His shoulders relax a little. “Yeah, that’s Beacon Hills these days. Population: the sleep-deprived and overcaffeinated. And you’d think that would be a great environment for werewolves, but—”

“We’re still people. We might be more comfortable after dark, but we don’t do any better under perpetual siege,” Peter says. He idly tests the phone, then powers it on when he realizes why it’s not responding.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I mean, watching my friend Scott—who’s even an alpha, but he’s so worn out these days it’s affecting his healing,” Stiles says. Then he does a very good imitation of somebody who’s embarrassed. “But I’m being that asshole who tells you stuff you already know.”

The phone beeps, signaling that it’s entered set-up mode, but Peter continues looking at the other man. “Are you?”

Initially Stiles looks confused. Then suspicious. Then an odd but not unflattering mix of curiosity and annoyance takes over his expression. “Look, I’m actually not trying to be an asshole, but my experience with werewolves basically is Scott, you, and Kali. And if Kali knew how to alpha a bunch of teenagers, I wouldn’t have had to take time out of my demon-banishing research to design werewolf-specific meditation exercises.”

“Well, you certainly seem to be familiar with the fact that werewolves aren’t automatically going to defend other werewolves, just by virtue of our shared nature,” Peter says. When Stiles’ brows draw together, he offers the other man a smile, and then sets about deciding on a passcode.

Stiles makes a noise in his throat that could be either aggravated or thoughtful. Given that he then does something on the laptop, Peter leans towards thoughtful. Behind all the verbosity and the antisocial mannerisms, he’s actually quite calculated, which would be a fascinating trait at any age.

“It wasn’t hideously bad till sophomore year. That’s when it got strong enough to start crossing out of the preserve. Before that we just had nights where we had to shut down all the exits and go on patrol to make sure nobody walked in,” Stiles says after a moment. Then he pushes the laptop towards Peter. “This is the tracker I was talking about. If you click the hyperlinks, it’ll take you into a photo.”

Peter’s in the middle of setting up his email, so he just glances up. “What happened sophomore year?”

“Kali and her druid and their amazing plan to make themselves into the new Hales, which failed miserably on top of giving the demon a nice druid-sized boost in power,” Stiles mutters. He looks over at Peter’s hands, then starts moving the cursor around the tracker. “It’s mostly localized to the kitchen, with maybe one corner of the living room. At least as far as we can tell—we haven’t been able to go inside in years, and we can’t get good shots of the upper floors from the outside.”

“The kitchen was the oldest part, aside from the basement. I think at least one of the walls is original, just drywalled over,” Peter says. He squints at the current photo, then exhales sharply when Stiles clicks away.

Before he has to ask, Stiles clicks back into it. “Do you recognize it?”

The photo shows a wall made of roughly-dressed stone—not brick, stone. It’s good-enough quality that he can even tell the type of stone is similar to the outcrops you can find all over the preserve, with their tendency to fracture evenly on the horizontal but badly on the vertical. “No,” Peter says after a moment. He sounds frustrated—he _is_ frustrated. He’s not used to being the one in the dark. “It doesn’t look…it doesn’t look _wrong_ , from what I was told by older members of the family, but I don’t know—it didn’t look like that when I lived there.”

“Drywalled over, you said,” Stiles says, almost as if he’s trying to soothe Peter. He clicks through a few more points in the timeline, showing alternative views of the wall. “I’m pretty sure that it’s trying to reproduce this room in particular, but it’s getting some detail wrong so it keeps trying. And if it’s working from memory, and none of you were here—so whose memory?”

“Don’t you have a list of the people who’ve died in there?” Peter snaps.

“Yeah, actually, I do,” Stiles snaps back. “You know, since my dad and I have to figure out how to write up all their cause of death reports.”

Peter presses his lips together. Then takes a deep breath, and pushes down his irritation, and does his best to look as apologetic as he knows he should be. “We weren’t here. We gave up our claim, and we really can’t act like we still have it,” he starts.

“Well, I mean, I’m not sure why you would anyway. It’s not like it’s great here,” Stiles says. Oddly, he doesn’t seem annoyed anymore. He glances at the tracker, then pushes himself back into the couch. His leg twitches with a cramp and he grabs at his thigh, then heaves out a sigh as he slumps down. “I’m sorry you had to come back. I really am. This isn’t your problem, and you should just get to…to leave, and not look back.”

“Thank you,” Peter says. After a moment’s consideration, and he doesn’t change his mind when Stiles shoots him a puzzled look. “You could have a different attitude. We didn’t know about any of this—we really didn’t. But it is our house, and, apparently, something about our family’s past, and a lot of people—”

“A lot of people also have come in and thought they were gonna beat this thing and ended up in the morgue, so it’s not like the powering up is totally on you,” Stiles mutters. He shrugs himself back upright and puts one hand out to the keyboard, then just lets his fingers rest. He looks at the screen. “I grew up with this. I don’t know, maybe that just shows how twisted this is, but…at this point, I don’t think anybody deserves this. I mean, not even Gerard Argent, and I can bet you guys hated him, but he _really_ didn’t see this coming.”

Peter snorts. “Yes. Well. That’s something of a comfort. Cold, but still…”

Stiles glances at him again. Then smiles—it’s a little tentative at first, as if Stiles is testing Peter’s reaction, and then firms up when Peter doesn’t object. “Yeah, I didn’t like him either. I was on a call with him once, when he was in jail, and he just…honestly still thought he had leverage, and then the way he fucked over his whole family going after a selfish power trip, and…anyway, yeah, he’s dead. So your house.”

“I think I’d be more help if I could get access to some of our family records. I can’t remember the details you need, and honestly, I may not know them at all,” Peter admits. He’s slept on it, and speaking of leverage, he can’t see any in holding back information. He’s certainly not going after the demon by himself, and there’s no upside in sending someone like Stiles in with faulty knowledge that’ll get him killed and strengthen the demon. “Or at least if I could talk to my sister. She is fourteen years older than me, she might remember—every head alpha renovated the place when they first took over. Putting their stamp on it, and the last time would have been when our father took over the pack.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. Then twitches nervously. “What? It’s daytime now and we’re not really trying to keep you prisoner, you know. I mean, we can even go over and see her in person, if you don’t want to test the phone.”

“Well, then, let’s do test the road,” Peter says, smiling. “It would be nice to see what Beacon Hills looks like without the Grand Guignol illusions.”

Stiles makes a face at him. “I knew I wasn’t making up you trying to convince me the bathwater was magically going to make me a dancing raisin.”

“What?”

“You know, that toy wasn’t even my idea. Scott’s dad forgot to get a present for my birthday party, and just grabbed some crap he had in the garage and made Scott pass it off,” Stiles goes on.

“Stiles, even if I said that, I really don’t see how that’s related to the demon’s illusions,” Peter says, after a long, bemused pause.

“You totally said that, you did, and they’re related because it was just a bunch of faking-outery,” Stiles says, his voice rising in outrage. But then he drops his face into his hand, rubbing at his eyes. “Okay, no, I just…sorry. I have weird coping mechanisms. Anyway, yeah, we can go over—you really can call them, to let them know you’re coming over. The phone’s safe, I…”

Am not going to talk about what he knows Peter can sniff out, Peter thinks in resignation, watching the other man’s face close in on itself. He doesn’t need to, doesn’t have to dig up his family’s dirty secrets in order to make Peter help, and all the sleep deprivation in the world can’t make Stiles forget that. So many people would enjoy this situation so much, Peter being the one to have to do all the earning of trust. 

“…I put enough blood in it,” Stiles abruptly says. Then grabs up his laptop and twists around the coffee table and leaves the room, while Peter’s still trying to believe what he just heard.

* * *

Stiles borrows Lydia’s car, a discreetly sleek sports car. There’s a battered-looking Jeep parked in the garage that Stiles passes by so stiffly Peter can’t help but pause, but Stiles calls him away from it.

“I’m out of gas, it’d be a pain,” Stiles mutters as he and Peter adjust their seats.

Peter nods and doesn’t prod the other man, even though Stiles keeps glancing over with increasing impatience. He does take his phone out, but not to put in any numbers besides the Stilinski household number that Stiles rattles off. Instead he checks his email, downloads a few things, bookmarks a few websites, and when he’s pulled out the research he deems critical, he removes his email account from the phone.

“You seem like the kind of guy who knows what blood magic means,” Stiles says a few minutes into the drive.

“I’m not the kind of guy who judges such things, which I think is what you really meant,” Peter answers. The public library’s changed the color of its roof, and updated its sign. He wonders if it ever bothered to put proper locks on its microfiche archives.

Stiles makes a studiously noncommittal noise. “No? Really? No judgment?”

Apparently, pandering to the other man doesn’t work any better than challenging him. Peter isn’t sure whether Stiles is more frustrating or fascinating. “Well, if we must spell it out…blood magic wouldn’t work that way unless you had a direct tie to the demon, which you’ve already hinted at. You also kept it from killing me, seem very enthusiastic about destroying it, and given the night this all started, you were barely able to tie your own shoes, I’m fairly sure you didn’t do this to yourself on purpose.”

“Shoelaces are hard when your fingers are the size of tater tots, okay?” Stiles says, but there’s a chuckle trying to fight its way out of his sarcasm. And, Peter notes, he looks as surprised about that as Peter is. “Okay. So you’re not judging. Just wondering.”

“I do know what it means,” Peter says after a long pause.

Stiles pauses nearly as long before responding. “My mom studied folklore in college. She wanted to be a field anthropologist, but then they had me, so she took some time off before going to grad school and just…never got around it. So when Dad came home talking about what had happened, what he’d seen Gerard doing in the woods…she’s the one who started putting things together.”

There had been a lot of mythology books in the Stilinski house, Peter remembers. That had been one of the pleasant surprises, that he’d actually have interesting reading material after he put Stiles to bed—at least, before he’d started hearing things outside.

“She came up with the idea to try and exorcise the demon, but that went wrong, too, and she—” Stiles abruptly stops talking.

He’s not crying, when Peter looks over. It didn’t sound like he was either, or smell like it. There’s grief in his scent, but it’s…sharp, almost angry, as if this had happened yesterday rather than a decade ago. And the way he’s staring at the road has more to do with anger than sadness.

“We think she’s the first one the demon really—really ate. I mean, a couple died before that, but they just died,” Stiles says, just as abruptly as he’d stopped. He flexes his hands against the wheel and Peter sees a faint silver tracery of lines over his arms. But the next blink, they’re gone. “Dad doesn’t like to talk about it—tell people about it. He thinks they’ll blame us, but it was all her idea. I have her notes, I can tell Dad didn’t come up with any of it.”

The fifth person, the one who hadn’t made it out of the house at all. “So you’ve been dealing with this since you were ten,” Peter says slowly. “The connection.”

Stiles tenses, then looks over at Peter. He’s defensive again, and isn’t entirely reassured by Peter’s expression. Peter decides not to say again, thinking it’ll just annoy the man, and eventually Stiles shrugs.

“Yeah. It’s been a while,” he says. “Hey, we’re here.”

He pulls into the driveway and then hurries out so he arrives at the front door besides Peter, who’s admittedly distracted by memories. It’s the same house. There’s a little more wear—flaking paint, a loose gutter—but it’s the same house. This entire town seems like it’s trapped in an illusion, Peter can’t help thinking. The same one, running over and over again, except with more damage every time.

“Peter!”

He drops his head and his niece is standing in front of him, staggered against the doorway. She has a black hand-shaped mark on her neck and when he sees it, the mark on his wrist suddenly prickles, and that is literally the only thing that lets her get in the first word.

“Oh, my God, you’re alive!” Laura says, staring at him with wide eyes. “And—and what are you wearing?”

“I didn’t have a choice about these,” Peter says, shaking himself out of it. “Also, _you selfish little nitwit_.”

“Um…” Stiles says, blinking, his head swiveling back and forth between them.

Laura stares at Peter for another moment, while the excitement in her scent drops—but doesn’t entirely go away. “Okay, so we’re both sure that we’re us, right?” she says. “And I wasn’t criticizing, I just meant the…the shirt’s okay, but the pants are—not you—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, niece,” Peter mutters, stalking into the house.

He does slow slightly as their shoulders brush, taking a closer look at her neck. Laura stiffens, then crooks her hair away from it. She turns quickly enough so that for a second, they’re leaning into each other, and yes, they’re both real. Both here.

Then she’s trailing after him, with a bemused Stiles after her, asking what he’s doing here. “Looking for your mother,” Peter says. Then pauses as his mind catches up with him. “Where’s Derek?”

Laura immediately tries not to look guilty.

“And your mother?” Peter snaps, having double-checked his heartbeat count. “And—and you had my niece here with _no one_ else?”

Stiles blinks hard, then stiffens. “Wait a second, no, that’s not…that’s not what…” he pauses, his eyes silvering briefly, and then looks as alarmed as Peter’s beginning to feel “…wait, Dad was supposed to be here. And Jordan—he was supposed to come back after he handled Scott’s dad—”

“He was supposed to bring my stuff back hours ago. And drive me and Derek to the airport,” Laura says accusingly.

“The airport?” Peter says.

“Mom’s idea,” Laura says. “We were going home. Me and Derek, I mean.”

Well, that makes sense…if Talia was then going to do something idiotic, having unburdened herself of her children. God, his sister can be so predictable. “The point was for us to all _find each other_ ,” Peter hisses. Then he stops himself. It almost physically hurts, he’s so—but killing his family is not really going to solve that problem. Really. “Fine. We’ll get them. Where did they go?”

“Mom went with his dad, I don’t know where,” Laura says, nodding to Stiles. She’s finally realized that the most sensible, least likely to upset Peter route is to just answer his questions without the sarcasm. “Derek—he went with this girl calling herself Allison Argent, because she said—”

“Oh, _fuck_ , that again?” Stiles says, pulling his phone out. “I am literally going to kill Jordan. Kill him, and then make him find my dad and—oh, so, look, Allison’s not here to follow in her family’s footsteps, so she’s not after Derek.”

“Well, I gathered that from how she seemed far more interested in publicly embarrassing your friend Scott,” Peter says. “Hardly a classic Argent tactic, copying a romcom movie.”

Stiles looks up from his phone. “What? Again? God, don’t tell me she mentioned his mom—”

“No, she totally came for him, she said she’d tell him everything that everybody else was hiding,” Laura says. “But look, I had a good reason for letting him go with her.”

Peter doesn’t immediately turn on her. Instead he silently counts to three, because his own family can’t possibly be this stupid. There has to be an alternative explanation. A demon living in his family’s old house is trapping people in illusions, for example.

“This is real, by the way,” Stiles says. When he and Peter’s eyes meet, he looks almost amused, under the grim sympathy.

“Look, Peter, before you go off on me,” Laura starts, her back straightening, shoulders spreading. She tries her best to lean on her alpha status and it really doesn’t do much good, from the way her voice starts to rise. “I wouldn’t have done that if I thought she wanted to kill him, and I really don’t think she does.”

“Oh, really,” Peter says. Deliberately pitching his voice lower than he needs to, so that she has to work to hear him and make sure he hasn’t started on the threats yet. “And what did you base this on? Your intense friendship that you struck up over the three days or so you spent recovering from your run-in with the demon?”

“No, from the quickie talk I had with this guy the demon sucked in.” Laura’s voice is both loud _and_ shrill at this point, but she’s always had the most annoying parts of her mother in her, and one of those is the complete inability to know when to be scared of him. She lifts her chin and stares him right in the eyes. “I wasn’t in the house but I still—I had my head in this—this _other place_. Okay? Like—like this pocket dimension, or something, and anyway, I don’t think everybody who it takes dies.”

“They don’t,” Stiles says.

Peter looks over, but the other man’s turned away. He’d sounded firm enough, but he doesn’t look like he’s paying any attention to the conversation whatsoever, with eyes glued to his phone as he types with both thumbs. In fact, even as Peter starts to ask exactly what that means, Stiles turns in a half-circle, pauses, and then turns slightly back before starting to amble slowly off towards a nearby room, muttering under his breath about this Jordan.

“This guy, he said he was an Argent too,” Laura says. “Peter. Peter? Are you—”

“Yes, yes, you were trapped by a demon who specializes in hallucinations and mindgames and still believe you were talking to a genuine member of the family that hunted us out of this town,” Peter says irritably, twisting back. “And he somehow talked you into letting another Argent take Derek.”

“She didn’t take him, he decided to go, and all I did was offer to cover for him,” Laura says. Her chin’s still up and at an angle that is growing increasingly pugnacious. “Look, are you going to hear me out?”

Peter snorts. “As opposed to assuming you’ve gotten your brother killed and all we can do at this point is try and find the body?”

Laura flinches sharply. He hadn’t actually expected her to take it so to heart, but…no, he doesn’t feel guilty. She’s an older sister, she shouldn’t need a reminder to look after her brother. Talia never—Peter does suppress a wince at that.

Talia has never not looked after him. She might not always have done it in a way Peter could stand, but she’s always had an eye out for him. If her children learned anything, they should have learned that.

“Listen, you ran off and they wouldn’t let us go after you—they shot _Mom_ up with a drug to knock her out, and then, when she woke up, that guy’s dad talked her around in five seconds. Mom was all just, go sit in the kitchen and then fly home in the morning while Peter and I handle this,” Laura finally hisses. Her voice is still a little shaky, but she’s clearly not going to accept her responsibilities without a fight. “But I’ve _seen_ this thing, Peter. I’ve seen it, and been in—I’ve been in its _home_. Because that’s what it’s doing out there, building a home, and I’ve seen it and you and Mom can’t fight this one. I love you both but not this time.”

There’s a note in her voice…strident, compelling. Desperate. It doesn’t lessen Peter’s disbelief, or soften his disapproval, but it does—he does sigh, and tilt his head, and wait for her to go on. She’s not going to listen to him till she’s done anyway, and he does tend to believe _Stiles’_ opinion about who is and isn’t in danger around here.

“It was weird.” Laura pauses for a moment, eyeing him warily. When he doesn’t interrupt her, she takes a deep breath. “I was in there for a second here, but it was longer _there_ and—it’s like the ghost of the house, with ghosts in it. I guess most of them _are_ ghosts, but this guy, he…he broke out of it for a second. He was—he had blood in him I could smell. It’s hard to explain.”

“You said he called himself an Argent,” Peter finally says. He doesn’t want to dismiss her idiocy, but he also doesn’t want to dismiss what she knows. What she’s saying does align with some of the things he’s heard about the fate of victims of blood magic. “How—”

“He smelled like this Allison girl—like a relative. And it was a time warp but we didn’t have forever, Jordan must have grabbed me right as I opened the window because I wasn’t—we didn’t get to say that much,” Laura says. Her hand drifts up and pushes at her hair, then drops to finger the dark handprint around her neck. “He said…he knew I was a Hale, he said I couldn’t be there. Said no way could a Hale cross over, or else it’d be too late, and said tell Allison, tell her she was right, that it had just let Gerard go the first time. And when Allison came up to the door—she said the same thing, trying to get Derek to go out. Peter, we have to figure this out or none of us are going home.”

“Must’ve been her dad,” Stiles says.

Both Peter and Laura start sharply; Laura has to put her hand out to steady herself against the wall, while Peter just bites back a growl. Stiles looks embarrassed and then waves his hands at them. It takes a second to realize he’s not pointing out anything for them and it’s just his attempt to—to bat reassurances at them, or something of that nature.

“She and Chris Argent—” he pauses as Peter nods in recognition “—they showed up a couple years ago, and they were trying to help banish the demon and Chris got trapped in the house. Since that, Allison’s hung around saying she wants to help, but I think she’s still trying to get her dad out first. Which, look, hate to be that guy, but at this point, the only priority we really can have is shutting the demon down.”

“Why did the demon let Gerard go, the first time?” Peter asks.

Stiles goes silent. His hand makes an aborted move down and then he makes a visible effort to not just excuse himself into his phone again. “I think it was betting on Gerard to come back, and try his little ritual again, and make it fully free. Demons can’t free themselves, they need a person to take that last step, and—” he twists away now, abruptly heading out of the hall “—except he ended up in jail and it got somebody else to screw up the magic. Look, I need to find my dad. The demon doesn’t have Derek or your sister, I’d know that.”

“What’s with him and his dad, by the way?” Laura asks after a second. “They’re pretty like the demon. You see that, right?”

“I see that you nearly let a demon get the better of you, and when that didn’t happen, your reaction wasn’t to ask what you did wrong, it was to find more dubious sources,” Peter snaps. He starts after Stiles, then stops. Takes out the phone Stiles had given him and pushes it at Laura’s protesting face. “This one isn’t possessed. Call your sister and tell her she can afford to miss a couple parties and get those boxes labeled ‘Grandfather’s Baseball Cards’ from the attic.”

“They aren’t any more dubious than—you’re not even telling me—because you never tell me—”

“They’re not your grandfather’s, they belonged to the Emissary we had when we were living here, and calling them baseball cards kept your nosy nose out of it,” Peter snorts.

Laura takes the phone from him. He can sense her resentment—liberally laced with a lingering guilt—following him like his own personal dust cloud, but given the circumstances, he’ll take that as a sign he’s doing right.

“They’re probably not dead either. I mean, Allison actually kind of crushed on Scott for a while, we all think, so she definitely doesn’t want to wipe out werewolves, and your sister’s with my dad who’ll keep her alive.” Stiles, standing near the kitchen corner with his attention divided between the phone in one hand and the pages of a notepad stuck to the fridge, suddenly smells frustrated. “He does that. Even remembers to leave a note about the garbage, but can’t tell me where he—”

“What’s the range of the mindreading?” Peter asks.

Stiles looks up sharply. Stares at Peter for a second. Then his mouth quirks at one corner. “Yeah, I used to be better at hiding that. Not being in class is terrible on my people-imitating skills.”

“It’s not really mindreading, is it?” Peter says after a moment. He makes sure his movements are slow and telegraphed as he comes up to the other man. “Only the emotions?”

“More or less. People project by default—I guess that’s why telepathy’s a lot rarer than, say, instant healing, or fangs,” Stiles says. He lets the notepad pages fall flat again and returns to his phone. “Fear’s also really easy to pick up on anyway, but you probably knew that. Look, I’ll get my dad, see what the hell he’s doing with your sister, and then we’ll pick up your nephew and—”

“How do you know when it takes people, they don’t always die?” Peter says.

Stiles stops typing on his phone, but he doesn’t look up.

“You said it wasn’t pure demon now, because you get flashes of the people it’s taken, but whose spirits are still trapped within it?” Peter asks. He’s treading on dangerous ground, he realizes that, but the pieces are finally starting to come together for him. “Because there’s that connection, and that’s how you know—”

“I’m not Allison,” Stiles suddenly snaps. He jerks his head up and his eyes are bright silver and they’re _pulling_ on Peter—but in nearly the same second he twists away. Brings his hand down and nearly smacks his phone against the counter, before stopping himself and jamming his hip against it instead, putting his back to Peter. “That’s the point. My mom went in there, and I loved her too, and if I’m sticking her in some kind of hell by killing the demon—well, fine. I’ll do it.”

The lines of the room are wavering too. Peter instinctively reaches for the nearest surface, but then pulls his hand back. Grounds himself instead by pricking his claws into his palm. That, and he keeps an eye on Stiles: the silvery patterns are ebbing and flowing from the Stiles’ cuffs and up the back of his neck.

“I wasn’t going to accuse you of not being—being committed to the cause,” Peter says, when the patterns have receded to just above the edges of Stiles’ shirt.

“Seriously? When you’re yelling at me to get your family back every other second?” Stiles mutters. His shoulders hunch a little higher, but the silver lines hold steady.

Peter glances around the room. That’s steadied as well, though here and there the walls flicker translucent—or perhaps it’s an overlay that’s washing over them, the bones of some other structure trying to push back through the accumulated flesh of the years. But when he takes a step towards the other man, the flickering doesn’t grow. “I do that because they’re my family. Even in their idiotic moments. But that doesn’t mean I can speak to your family, or what you have to do to look after them.”

Stiles abruptly pulls his elbows into his sides. There’s still a wide space between him and Peter, but it’s as if he means to squeeze himself away and escape—and then he snorts, shakes head. Turns to face Peter instead. “Okay, so, the nonjudgmental guy is my one-night-babysitter who thinks small children aren’t gonna notice that under-the-bed monster check also took the candy stash?”

“I—well, if that happened, you weren’t supposed to have that anyway,” Peter says. He doesn’t look away, because honestly, he’s not embarrassed by it.

“Yeah, sure,” Stiles snorts, his mouth halfway curved to a smile. He’s…not fragile, Peter thinks that’s the entirely wrong word. But his voice had cracked a moment before, and it still isn’t entirely smooth, and his eyes are still sharp the way the jagged edge of a broken mirror is sharp. Then he does firm up, but it’s not because he’s reassured. It’s because he’s sighing and looking at his phone again. “Let me get hold of my dad. We really should get you all out of this.”

He’s closer to real, Peter thinks. But that’s…and then Peter thinks it over. No, it’s not wrong. It’s not quite on point either, because Stiles is not fake, in any sense of the word. But before this Peter had had the sense that the other man wasn’t quite—quite of this world, wasn’t simply the tired and cranky and overwhelmed person standing in front of him. The tattooing is gone, too.

“We should be able to figure out what era we’re looking at,” Peter says after a moment, when Stiles doesn’t look up. “Just some research—or at least narrow it down. If the demon’s trying to take advantage of some sort of magic my family put in place—well, it wouldn’t surprise me, that’s one of the reasons why the druids have always been so thick around us—”

“Druids,” Stiles snorts, but he’s absentminded about it. He puts one hand up and rubs at his eye, then presses it against the bridge of his nose. Then goes back to rubbing at his eye, while poking at his phone with his other hand. “Yeah, tell me about it. We were so busy trying to grab Gerard because Deaton messed up the first intercept we set for the guy, because—because—”

The man’s smell suddenly goes sour, a second before Stiles slaps his hand against the counter. He blinks hard, eyes silvering and then normal again, swaying slightly on his feet. “Stiles?” Peter says, crossing over to him.

“What—don’t—don’t _touch_ me—” Stiles hisses. He jerks, but blindly, not getting away from Peter so much as ramming himself into the counter’s edge. His phone clatters to the counter as he starts to weave his head in erratic motions. “Don’t—don’t—what are you doing, don’t _talk_ to her—no!”

“Stiles!” Peter says sharply. It’s clear the man is no longer speaking to him. “Stiles!”

And then Stiles goes white and slides towards the ground. Peter grabs him by the wrist, bare-handed, then curses and switches to grabbing at his clothing to try and avoid getting caught in his magic. But Stiles’ clothing is too baggy and Peter’s forced to simply loop an arm around him to keep his head from banging into the fridge—the world isn’t exactly mutating anyway, Peter belatedly notes.

“Peter?” Laura appears in the doorway. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I have no idea,” Peter mutters, sticking his hand into Stiles’ collar. The pulse at the man’s throat is strong enough, and so is Stiles’ breathing. He rearranges Stiles against the fridge and then uses his thumb to peel back Stiles’ eyelid. “I—”

That, Peter manages to think, before he’s swallowed up, is not the brightest idea he’s ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only thing keeping Lydia from taking over this story is the fact that the threeway plotline is already pushing it way over 50K words.
> 
> Stiles had a [California Dancing Raisin toy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_California_Raisins). They were big in the 1980s, then lingered on into the 90s. Even when Stiles was a tiny little boy, he was precocious about ironic appreciation of kitsch.
> 
> This story has a lot of cliff-hanger chapters. I know. It's going to keep happening.


	13. Chapter 13

The drive to Scott’s house is very quiet. It’s when they get up to the front door that things start to get insane again. Okay, there’s no good way for Derek to carry Scott, who’s still out, so that when Scott’s father opens the door, it doesn’t look bad. But he still thinks that drawing a gun is _not_ going to help that.

“Put it down,” says a steely voice at Derek’s shoulder, just as what feels very much like another gun bumps the side of his head.

Derek holds very still. The man in the doorway stares past him, gun moving slightly off Derek’s face. Slightly. Any bullet still will take off part of Derek’s skull, and while in _theory_ , if it’s not a wolfsbane bullet, he could heal, it…would take a really long time. And he can’t remember exactly what Peter told him about the brain damage part.

“Who is he?” the man in the doorway demands.

“He’s your kid, and for God’s sake stop doing that,” Jordan says, coming up on Derek’s other side. He reaches over Scott’s lolling head and shoves aside Scott’s father’s gun, then continues on into the doorway so that Scott’s father has to step back. “I called you and I told you we were coming, and then I had Tara call you too, and he’s really a mess so stop being an asshole, McCall. Jesus, Derek, just bring him in already.”

When Derek takes a step forward, he turns to the side, both so that Scott’s feet won’t bang the doorway and so he can see whether Allison’s put away her gun. She hasn’t, and she doesn’t lower it any further than the gut as she walks in after Derek, head high, barely a glance at Scott’s father, who is clearly seething.

“I don’t trust phone calls. You people taught me that, remember?” Scott’s father says to Jordan. 

Jordan rolls his eyes. “Take a left, up the stairs, second door on the right,” he says to Derek, and then he turns on Scott’s father. “And you, you’re going to listen for once, because this night has been the night from—”

“Is that guy another one of them?” Scott’s father demands.

Allison pushes at Derek, who had slowed a little upon reaching the staircase. She catches his eye and nods upstairs, and he knows that, but also, having just had a gun in his face, he wants to make sure the guy who’d driven them through this horrorshow of a town isn’t about to get shot. Not that he’s forgiven Jordan for earlier with his mother, but getting Jordan for that also means making sure Jordan doesn’t get shot.

“I will literally punch you in the face if you don’t stop being an asshole,” Jordan finally says. “I will punch you, and then I’m going to get dinner from your fridge. Breakfast. Whatever.”

“He’ll be fine,” Allison mutters, giving Derek another nudge. She starts to go up ahead of them, then hesitates, her eyes drifting to Scott’s head. Then she jerks her gaze back up. “Come on. Sooner we get him into bed, the better for him.”

Scott’s father isn’t saying anything back, though he reeks like he wishes he could. Derek waits a second longer, listening to the regular lollop of Jordan’s heartbeat, and then he hefts Scott and goes up with Allison.

She leads him to the right door but then, before opening it, she pulls her sleeve down over her hand so she won’t touch the knob. And when the door begins to swing in, she steps back out of Derek’s way instead of going inside. Derek’s not so dense he can’t see the cues, and he looks all around the doorway and then into the room for whatever she’s afraid of setting off. His skin is tingling and he can smell just a hint of dried leaves, so it’s probably magic.

“You should be fine, Scott’s always let other werewolves come in.” Allison leans against the outside jamb, watching him. “Even when he probably shouldn’t, but…oh, and Jordan’s merged with a Hellhound, so you really don’t need to worry about him. It’s not like Scott’s dad can actually hurt him.”

“He is?” Derek says. 

Then gets hold of himself, and gets Scott over by the bed. But then he hesitates, looking at the pristine, perfectly-tucked sheets—which clearly have been slept in a few times, says his nose, and Scott kind of doesn’t seem like that type and not important—and then at the dirt all over Scott. Dirt and…whatever you call undead-rekilled-great-grandaunt powder.

“Yeah, I know, he hides it really well. Stiles and his dad helped him learn that. Which I think is why he actually stays in this place, because it’s not like a Hellhound really needs all this trouble,” Allison says. “Just put him down, I’ll show you where the linen closet is.”

On the other hand, what also doesn’t fit is Scott, an alpha whose territory Derek is intruding on and who went ahead and threw himself into two of Derek’s fights anyway, getting mad about a set of ruined sheets. Derek swings the man’s body onto the bed. Then he bends over and takes off Scott’s shoes. Scott lost his shirt in the fight, and Derek isn’t going to touch anything below the waist, so that’s pretty much all Derek can do.

He still pauses for a second, looking down at the bed. Heartbeat and breathing are steady, and though Scott’s skin still has an oily sheen to it from sweating out the Nine Herbs, it’s only in patches, which means whatever needed to be purged, purged. The worst is clearly over, and Scott being an alpha, a good nap probably is all he needs.

“Hey.” When Derek looks over, Allison tosses him a sheet. She’s still standing just outside the door, and looks a little apologetic about how the sheet unfolds mid-throw. “I’m going to get him a glass of water and then I’ll meet you down—”

“Wait, I’ll go,” Derek says, shaking the sheet over Scott. He does a half-assed job about it, but figures he’s just going to be back up in a couple minutes anyway.

Allison does wait for him, but she looks almost suspicious about it. Then she drops her head slightly and stifles a yawn into her hand, and he realizes it was more like she’s confused but fatigue is making her squint. “It’s okay, I don’t think anybody is going to be doing any more fighting tonight. I’ve…been around here long enough, when Jordan’s acting like that, that means he’s done for the night. And when he’s done, pretty much nobody but Stiles or Lydia ignores him.”

“I guess that’s reassuring,” Derek mutters. He debates about whether to close the door, then leaves it be.

Jordan and Scott’s dad have moved their argument to the far end of the first floor, and Derek can hear them talking, but he can’t make out what’s being said because one of them is snapping and rustling papers too loudly. Still, if they’re not yelling at each other, Allison’s probably right. She’s been more right than wrong so far.

The kitchen is in the other direction and Allison leads the way to that too, though she keeps hesitating every so often. The pauses are barely long enough to be noticeable, like she’s just seeing things out of place rather than being really surprised. “I thought you and Scott weren’t working together?” Derek asks.

Which maybe is not the best way to start that conversation, but Allison just shrugs as she finds a glass. She has to open two cabinets to get one. “We did, for a little bit, before my dad—before that happened. And he still…he will let me in once in a while, if he thinks I just want to talk, and not—not get information, or try and talk about what I know what to do about the demon. If I let him, I think we’d still be friends.”

She’s bitter at the very end, but not towards Scott. She fills up the glass from the tap, then hands it to Derek. Then steps back. He frowns and she gets out another glass and fills it up and drinks from it and is halfway through getting a bowl too when she realizes he’s not moving.

“I’m going to eat something,” she says. She starts to close the cabinet, then looks at him again. “Once Jordan’s done talking to Scott’s dad, he’ll probably see me out, but you should be fine to stay.”

“With the guy who pulled a gun on his own kid?” Derek says.

Allison doesn’t say technically, it was mostly pointed at Derek. Actually, she just makes a face as she hunts out a box of cereal from another cupboard, which…pretty much answers Derek’s question.

He stands there for maybe another minute, then takes a half-step backward. Allison glances at him but just keeps making herself a bowl of cereal, and not talking about—about what happened in the cemetery, or why she was wrong about what’d been in the grave, or any of the hundred honestly pressing issues they should be talking about. And Derek doesn’t press her. Instead, he just goes back up with the glass of water.

It’s not like he’s scared of her, or even thinks that if he does push her, she’s going to try to kill him. Or that he no longer cares about getting himself and his family out of town. But there’s just this…this limpness he can see in her, one more drop and the paper towel’s going to shred apart under its own weight, and he just wants that to not happen.

So he figures he’ll go back up and drop the water on a desk and come back down, and the little break will satisfy his conscience. Except when he opens the door, Scott’s not the way Derek left him.

“What are you doing?” Derek says.

Scott is still on the bed. But he’s flopped over on his stomach, not on his back, with his head and arms hanging over the mattress, tangled in something white. When Derek speaks, an eye and most of Scott’s hair jerks free from the white thing, and then Scott falls off the bed.

“Ow,” comes Scott’s muffled voice. He contorts some more, then finally gets his shirt on. Then looks up at Derek, worry starting to dawn on his face. “Hey, did—did Dad—”

“Jordan’s handling him,” Derek says.

Scott’s shoulders slump in relief. Then tense a little as he smells guilty. He nods and then uses the bed to get to his feet; he’s shaky enough that the dip of the mattress under his hands throws him off-balance, and Derek ends up giving up and just going over and grabbing his arm.

“Thanks,” Scott says, looking embarrassed. “I think I’m okay now.”

“You bit out the heart of my great-grandaunt,” Derek points out.

Well, that’s what he meant, anyway. Going by the look on Scott’s face, it came out more like an accusation. “I’m really—if I’d had any other way—”

“Okay, look, she was trying to kill us, so I don’t have a problem with that part. I just—meant it was a giant fight and you still look like shit. And my mother and sister are both alphas, so I know that doesn’t mean nothing can touch you,” Derek says, annoyed. He lets go of Scott’s arm but doesn’t step back, in case the guy tries something like running out the door. “Anyway, there’s no way you’re going out again.”

Scott sits on the bed and looks up at Derek, and his face is sorry, then surprised, then sheepish with maybe a touch of amused. But then, as Derek says that last part, he starts getting mulish. And pulling at his shirt, which isn’t completely straight on him. “Derek, thanks for getting me home, but it’s morning now. We’ve got a ton to do—which your family doesn’t have to worry about. Except for—oh, we still have to get Peter! I mean, I’m pretty sure Stiles is already on it, but I should check in with him and—”

Maybe Jordan has the right idea about punching people. Except it’s weird that Derek even thinks a ‘maybe’ should be in that sentence, when he’s looking at Scott. He wonders for a second how exactly it’s right that he can feel this irritated and at the same time, feel like the last thing he wants is a fight. “You are literally going to fall on your face if you get up.”

“I’m,” Scott says, starting to push himself up. Then he stops and grabs onto the bed with both hands. He bites his lip and stares past Derek till his head stops swaying. “Well. I have to.”

“If you really want to know what Stiles is doing, just tell me where your phone is and—so how do you talk to each other? Without the demon tricking you?” Derek says.

“Oh, Stiles does this—he’s got this spell,” Scott says. He’s clearly still dizzy, and when he tries to wave his hand at his desk in the corner, he nearly hits Derek. He winces and pulls his arm back, then looks up at Derek. “I have to go.”

Derek suddenly understands what Peter means about migraine-inducing stupidity. “There are literally people who are more mobile than you right now. Like…like Jordan.”

Scott looks guilty again. “Yeah, I know, I already owed him and my dad’s probably giving him hell. I should go down there and explain.”

This is clearly not the way to convince Scott, and…God, this isn’t what Derek is good at. He blows out his breath in irritation, knowing that that’s not going to help either, but he’s just so fed up with everything that he can’t hold it in. This fucking town, his fucking missing family, this guy who—who keeps just _saving_ him, and it’s not even really that big a deal to Scott. It’s clearly just what Scott _does_ , and the fact that Scott looks and smells like he’d have to crawl into a grave for an actual rest doesn’t even seem to register with him.

“Hey,” Scott says, and suddenly, Derek realizes he just said some of that out loud. Scott puts his hand out and grabs Derek’s elbow, and looks up with this completely goddamn sincere expression. “Look. This…all this stuff going on, it probably feels like we’re making it all your family’s fault. I mean, I don’t know what everyone else has told you, but—”

“It actually kind of is. I don’t know how else you explain my undead great-grandaunt,” Derek says. “And my old house.”

Scott’s brows furrow towards each other, but he keeps talking like, in the nicest way possible, he wasn’t listening to Derek. “It’s really not. It’s just this place, and it’s not your fault you’re here, and it really shouldn’t be your problem. We’ve been trying to fix this for forever, and—and I just—I just really, really want to stop seeing people die. Okay?”

Derek opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then opens it again. Because honestly, what is he going to say to that? No, you should just get used to liking it? But at the same time, Scott is ridiculous, and someone needs to say that, before the guy gets himself killed, and Derek suddenly, in a deep, visceral way he isn’t quite sure he’s ever felt before, wants to be that person.

It throws him off, and that’s why he’s a beat late when Scott hikes himself off the bed, takes a weaving step around Derek, then somehow propels himself towards the door. “Hey!” Derek says.

Scott actually stops and looks back at him. Being polite, even though he nearly loses his balance doing it, and Derek just—shoves the glass of water at him. “Oh,” Scott says. He hesitates, then shakes his head. “Oh, thanks, but maybe after I shower, think I need to wake up first before I do anything…”

And Derek just…lets him walk out.

A couple minutes pass. A door down the hall closes, and then the shower goes on. Derek takes a step forward, then curses under his breath. Then curses more viciously and hurries out of the room and down the stairs, before he misses Allison too.

Except he won’t, because she’s standing right on the top step. She looks sharply at him and he slows enough to hear Jordan’s and Scott’s dad’s voices coming nearer. He grimaces and she nods, and then looks sympathetic. “You know, for what it’s worth…he probably has no idea,” she says. She pauses, studying Derek, then nods at the glass in Derek’s hand. “He wasn’t Kali’s beta for that long, and anyway, she didn’t exactly prioritize teaching her new pack members. After that Stiles helped him figure out stuff, and he was talking to Deaton—to this druid for a while, but I don’t think either of them thought learning pack etiquette was important.”

“If he doesn’t want the water, he doesn’t want it,” Derek says, narrowing his eyes at her.

Allison looks annoyed. Then just tired. “Listen, I just—before Jordan chases me out, I just wanted to let you know I’m staying downtown, at the corner of Third and Sewell. I’m going to go through all my notes again, and—and here.”

She pushes her hand over and slips something into Derek’s jeans pocket, then gets her hand out almost before he can grab her wrist. It’s the key—he can feel the outline against his leg. “Why do I—why me?” he says.

“Well, it’s yours, really,” Allison says. She pauses, then drops her voice; Jordan and Scott’s dad are almost in the room below. “I took a photo of it, I should be able to do research from that. And you’re not totally wrong about not trusting us, honestly. I…I didn’t think that was going to happen, back there in the cemetery, but I still—I could’ve checked without you.”

“Yeah, and then you’re grave-robbing,” Derek says. He really doesn’t understand anybody who lives here. They’re out running around trying to kill a demon before it kills them and they’re still always smelling guilty. If it was him, he’d just give up on caring about other people’s feelings. “You told me there was a curse before I walked in. You actually _were_ right.”

Allison looks surprised. Then suspicious, for some reason. But not—not like she wants to pull away, which is odd if she’s going to doubt Derek.

But then Jordan walks up to the bottom of the stairs and Allison twists around, pulling her arm from Derek. “I’m coming,” she mutters.

Jordan breathes in, but then doesn’t say anything and just watches her walk down the stairs. He looks like maybe he doesn’t hate her, but mostly, he just wants to get going. When she’s past him, he looks back at Derek. “I’m crashing on the couch over there for an hour,” he says. “Any longer, I’m going to turn into a living torch. I am setting an alarm, and when it goes off, I’ll take you back—”

“We missed the flight,” Derek says. “Right?”

“Well, that was your mom’s idea,” Jordan says, shrugging. “Guess you and your sister can talk to her about it. Me, I’m literally just supernatural Uber tonight. But look, I’d appreciate it if—”

Derek rolls his eyes. Then, thinking the better of it, he just takes a seat on the stairs. Drinks some water, since nobody else seems to want to, and then holds the glass between his knees as he stares at Jordan.

“Okay, then. And I see the passive-aggressive death stare is a family thing,” Jordan says, turning away. “Up and at ‘em in an hour.”

* * *

Derek stays on the stairs. It’s quiet, and if he scoots over to one side, he can keep track of anything coming from the upstairs or downstairs. He listens to Jordan’s snoring, since apparently hellhounds do that—Jordan’s the first one Derek has ever met in the flesh, but Derek’s mom and Peter have taught him about them. They’re actually not that rare, but given how closely connected they are to horrible impending death, you usually don’t find them in the suburbs.

Then again, Derek thinks, looking around himself. He rolls his shoulders, feeling the low ache that’s settling into them, and then takes out the key Allison gave him.

It’s about as long as his palm. One of those old-fashioned skeleton keys, with a big loop at one end and notched rectangular teeth at the other. Heavy. He doesn’t think it’s made of iron, since it’s been buried for over a century but doesn’t have any rust on it, but that’s what it smells like. And he has no idea what it goes to. He doesn’t remember that much of their old house, but from what he does remember, it looked modern. He knows it was actually older, but by the time he was alive, pretty much all of the older parts had been covered up. The only…the only part he remembers that maybe would fit was the old fireplace in the kitchen, except it wasn’t even a fireplace anymore. Somebody had converted it to a pantry, and he remembers playing hide-and-hunt in there with his sisters. There hadn’t been any old keyhole.

Footsteps come towards Derek, sharp and quick, and he hastily shoves the key back into his pocket. Then he looks up, and Scott’s father stops at the bottom of the stairs.

“Parrish says you used to live here,” the man says, as if he’s calling Derek a trash-eating stray dog. “What the hell’s going on?”

Derek looks at him. Sometimes people tell him that he needs to speak up more, and that the silent glowering really isn’t that effective, but it isn’t always about just looking intimidating. Sometimes it’s about the fact that Derek not only doesn’t know what to say, but he also doesn’t want to waste the energy to figure that out. Because some people just aren’t worth it.

Scott’s father stares back, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. Then he makes a disgusted noise and pushes at his hair. “You know what, I just don’t understand why you people think it’s acceptable to drag in your problems at all hours and expect me to look the other way. It’s not about the _supernatural_ , you understand? I’ve stopped fighting that fight. It’s about trying to live a decent, quiet, ordered life—”

“Well, you could leave,” Derek says. Then shrugs. “Heard you did that too, like we did.”

The guy isn’t afraid of a fight, and for a human he doesn’t have bad reflexes. Or a bad stance—he got rid of the gun at some point, so he’s shifting back like they’re going to box this out, or something like that. But then he glances up, past Derek, and his hands go back to his sides. He keeps staring up, his expression undecided between anger and…and something quieter, and maybe sadder. All Derek hears from upstairs is actually, the absence of noise: the shower’s off, and Scott must be just standing in place.

“You know, my son? My son, who you brought home for the umpteenth time unconscious from God knows what?” Scott’s father eventually says. He’s still looking up the steps. “And I mean literally God knows, because no one ever tells me. Even Scott just handwaves it, he’s an alpha now, that’s all I need to know, as if the nights he actually stays in, he doesn’t wake up screaming with nightmares. He could leave too. He could.”

He’s not having this discussion with Derek. That’s pretty obvious. And it’s not like Derek loves playing the stand-in, but he has a feeling if he gets up, Scott’s dad will start talking to him. If he just lets the guy vent, maybe Scott’s dad will get tired and walk off and Derek can just…

“But he doesn’t. And don’t tell me it’s about Melissa dying, because I know better about that, too,” Scott’s father says, finally looking back at Derek. His lips are curling back from his teeth in a way that would be massively insulting if he were a werewolf. “He’s doing it for that so-called friend of his, when if the Stilinskis had just—hadn’t tried—when they are constantly telling me that no _amateurs_ should ever dabble in magic, those hypocrites—”

“Dad,” Scott says from the top of the stairs.

Derek had heard Scott come up; Scott’s father clearly hadn’t, and he startles back a step. His head goes up and his heartbeat takes a beat longer to slow than it would if he was just getting over being surprised. But in the end, he doesn’t look ashamed of what he’d been saying. “Scott. You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m just going to sleep in today, I think. Sorry I missed your calls earlier,” Scott says. He and his dad are both using the robotic tone of people repeating well-worn lines. “You need to go into work soon, don’t you?”

“I could handle it from here for the morning, if you’re not feeling well,” Scott’s father says, and right then a slightly different note enters his voice. It starts out pleading but then loses its force, goes low and bitter.

“I’m okay. You really shouldn’t be late,” Scott says. “Not for me.”

Scott’s father goes very stiff for a moment, looking up over Derek’s shoulder. One of his hands is clenching and unclenching by his side. The gorge of his throat tightens, and Derek thinks—but no, the guy just nods and turns. And then, as Scott’s exhaling, twists back. “Scott, you know I—you can sleep in as long as you need to.”

“Okay. Thanks. Have a good day, Dad,” Scott says.

The tension is so thick that Derek thinks if he opened his mouth and bit, the entire floor would be drenched in the spray. It’s like that, like the throb of blood rushing through somebody’s jugular, and as it stretches on, he thinks that he’s just going to get up and go, because he can’t sit in this. The demon eating him would be better—his undead ancestors chasing him around town would be better.

And then Scott’s father abruptly turns and goes. For good. A couple minutes later, Derek even hears the garage door.

“Sorry, that was probably really awkward for you,” Scott says.

Derek twists around and looks up, and then changes his mind and makes that into standing up. “You really _should_ take a nap.”

“Yeah, I know, but…honestly, I’m not going to fall asleep. When I—you know, when you’re doing a lot, and—”

“You mean the come-down? Because you were fighting, and your body can’t believe you’re not anymore?” Derek says. “Yeah, it’s annoying.”

Scott pauses as if he’s not sure Derek is really saying that, and then his shoulders sag and he gives Derek a relieved smile. He’s got wet hair and a new set of clothes that’s kind of clingy, because he hasn’t toweled off that well. He doesn’t smell like graveyard and undead monster anymore, and Derek is not that fucking guy, Jesus.

“Allison left,” Derek says, trying to focus. “Jordan said he’d nap for—actually, he’ll probably be up soon.”

“Well, I should eat, anyway. I didn’t really leave anything in my stomach after—oh, sorry,” Scott says, wincing yet again as he comes down the stairs.

Derek moves over, then follows him. “Scott. She was trying to kill us. She is _not_ family at this point.”

“Okay, okay, I just know I don’t really know anything about other werewolves, or packs,” Scott says, mild enough that Derek almost misses the weary thread of humor in it. He goes into the kitchen and opens up the fridge, then looks past the door. “You should eat something too, you smell hungry. Do you want some bacon?”

Jesus Christ. Sheer instinct makes Derek grunt noncommittally, but of course that means Scott takes it as a ‘yes’ and takes out the packet of bacon and starts opening it up. And Derek just…just shoots an arm out and grabs it, and there’s already a pan on the nearby stove and he just dumps in the bacon.

“Um…thanks,” Scott says, blinking. He pauses, then goes to the sink and washes his hands. Then turns back and watches Derek peel apart the strips. “This is a werewolf thing I’m missing.”

He isn’t asking a question. “It’s fine,” Derek mutters.

“I’m not a real alpha,” Scott says suddenly. “You might want to know—it’s not like I was born this way, or I killed an alpha. I just…turned into one, in the middle of this one fight with the demon.”

“It’s called a true alpha,” Derek can’t help saying. “Which kind of means—”

“Yeah, I know, Dr. Deaton explained that. But it just…it still doesn’t feel like I’m really what other werewolves mean, when they say ‘alpha.’ I’ve never really had a…a werewolf pack—I was sort of part of Kali’s, but they all got killed after just a couple months—except Jackson, but he was barely pack either,” Scott says, his scent seesawing between guilty and grieving, with a momentary flattening out when this Jackson gets mentioned. “Kali wasn’t going to be beta to anybody, not that she should have to…and I have friends and family, but being alpha…that should mean I should be able to protect them, right?”

Derek looks over at him. Scott genuinely appears to want his opinion. Then again, the man genuinely wants a lot of things that seem insane, and Derek is increasingly wondering if maybe the demon set up shop here because it’s the one place where it doesn’t actually stand out too much.

“I mean, I try, but Stiles and his dad, they were doing that way before I ever got bitten,” Scott goes on. “Jordan doesn’t really need it, with what he is, and even Allison…she lost her dad, and she’s still—”

“My sister is an alpha and the only reason we’re all here is because she’s obsessed with this place,” Derek finally says. “We left, and Mom and Peter never talk about it and if you ask me, if people like them don’t want to talk about it, that’s a _sign_ but no, Laura’s always pulling that kind of shit, just because she figures an alpha can get away with it. So hell if I know what being an alpha’s about, besides picking the worst vacation spots in the world.”

Then he looks back at the bacon. He’s got it all separated so he uses the nongreasy joints of his fingers to twist on the stove, then sidesteps to the sink to wash his own hands. Then tries to find something to turn the bacon with, only to turn around and find Scott doing that with a fork.

“Well, okay, if I gotta accept that, you have to be okay with me helping you out once in a while, and it doesn’t have to mean we’re pack. It just means I’m helping,” Scott says. He glances at Derek, a little more uncertain than he sounds. Then he smiles again. “That was a good point you brought up. I’m…I just get upset sometimes and…sorry, you probably are so sick of walking into our issues.”

Derek is, but he knows better than to say so. He just keeps his mouth shut and tells his instincts to shut up and stuff down on the warm feelings and stands there. Or actually, he could be doing something. Getting juice from the fridge, plates, stuff like that.

They work in peace for a while, Scott cooking and then transferring the bacon to drain on paper towels, Derek hunting out the rest of breakfast. It’s almost normal, and a little of the constant itching under Derek’s skin subsides. Not all of it had had to do with the demon, or not knowing where his family is—werewolves are social, Peter keeps lecturing him, but just because Peter likes to use it as a lesson bomb doesn’t mean it isn’t meaningful. It’s not natural for werewolves to be the loner, always-on-their-guard type. Pack is pack to give you a chance to relax.

“Oh, hey, your uncle’s fine. Stiles did get him,” Scott suddenly says. He’s standing with his breakfast plate and holding a note he’s just pulled from the messy stacks that cover half the dining room table. “Sorry, just found this—looks like Tara told Dad. They’re over at Lydia’s house, and we can probably call them now if you want. Or did you want to get back to your sister?”

Derek breathes out a little more deeply. Peter is Peter, and that means if he actually _had_ died, Derek would expect the world to end right after that, either because of whatever Peter was doing or because of what Derek’s mom would do. And then he really thinks about it, absently chewing on some bacon. 

His mother may or may not still be out with Stiles’ dad—if she’s out, then going back to Laura will just mean they’re sitting around picking at their claws again. If she’s back, she’s probably yelling at Laura and Derek should not show up till that’s done—seeing as Laura offered and all, and she seriously owes _all_ of them. And he’s not even going to think about Peter, who if he is fine, is probably grilling the hell out of Stiles and nobody interrupts Peter in the middle of an interrogation.

Plus there’s that key in Derek’s pocket.

“Morning, Scott. Why are you up?” Jordan ambles into the room, with bloodshot eyes, rumpled clothes, and his tone ratcheted up from flat to exasperated.

Scott opens his mouth.

“Stiles found Peter, your dad’s getting Gerald’s legs, Allison went back to her place, and we know where all four Hales are,” Jordan says. He leans around the fridge and checks out the bacon in the pan, then opens a drawer and gets a fork and starts eating bacon straight from the pan. “Marin’s even at the hospital, per the nurses. So amazingly, nobody’s missing!”

Something about this guy annoys Derek. Probably the part where Scott just looks like this is okay with him. “You’ve been up all night too,” Scott says, handing Jordan a napkin.

“What’s that beeping noise?” Derek says.

“My phone. Which I don’t want to answer. The last two times I answered it in the last twenty-four hours, I ended up looking at a dead body,” Jordan says with fake-cheerfulness. “Okay, so itinerary: Scott, bed. Derek, grocery run and then my place—”

“What?” Derek says.

Jordan sighs in relief as the beeping stops. Then crams a whole strip in his bacon and talks through it. “I already have plastic taped over a whole window thanks to your sister, and me being a cop only goes so far with my landlord. We get her stuff, get some granola into her so she stops being hangry, and—”

“She hates granola,” Derek says.

“Well, for someone who hates it, she ate an entire unopened box,” Jordan mutters. Then he walks over to the sink and cups his hand under the tap, getting water to clear out his mouth. “Anyway, whatever, something to replace these special energy bars she was so mad I lost because I was getting her out of your house. I’ve been hearing about them for four straight days now.”

Derek thinks back for a moment, then frowns. “I’m pretty sure you’re the one who brought them up the last time.”

“Because you weren’t here for the first three days and seriously, I didn’t eat them. I’m—this isn’t New York City, but it’s not some corrupt hick town either and _when_ do you think we have the time to steal your stuff?” Jordan demands, turning around. “I’ve got a body a week to make up a non-supernatural cause of death for.”

Scott clears his throat, looking nervously between them. Jordan’s head ticks towards the noise, and then Jordan blinks hard. Looks at Derek again, smelling a little like—the man turns sharply away and Derek doesn’t even need to ask whether hellhound scents work the same as other shifters, because he knows just from the man’s expression.

“Laura hasn’t really had a great couple of days. I mean, she caused it, but still, it’s been rough,” Derek says, watching Jordan’s back. “And just so you know—”

“Did your dad move the coffeemaker?” Jordan says to Scott, turning this way and that and looking at the counter.

“Oh, maybe—”

“—she actually doesn’t like those bars. She’s more of a jerky person. It’s just she does this all the time, goes off on some road-trip and we bought her a box as a joke, like don’t starve in the wilderness. It’s like a good-luck charm, she just takes it along but she never actually eats them,” Derek says. 

Jordan pivots sharply and stares at Derek. “She what?”

“She doesn’t eat them. Also, she’s my _sister_ ,” Derek says. “So why the hell did you lock her in your bedroom anyway?”

Scott had been pulling a coffeemaker out of a lower cupboard, but he immediately straightens up, looking worried. Which makes Derek feel bad, but before he can call things off, Jordan flushes and puts a hand up to the side of his face. Then takes it off and starts jabbing his finger at Derek. “I didn’t. She locked herself _in_ because she was mad we broke her phone so the demon wouldn’t call you guys, and then I had to leave and when I have to leave, I have to seal up everything because like I said, my landlord doesn’t like it when I have to _torch_ a place because it’s _demon-tainted_. I told her that, and told her either she came out with me or she stayed put till I was back. It was only my place to begin with because she said she’d murder whoever put her in the hospital and pissed off Lydia over _shoes_ and—”

“And you were still going to buy her granola,” Derek says. He stares back at Jordan, because honestly, it stopped being funny the second he realized Jordan and Laura actually have been _talking_ , and not just doing weird retaliatory destruction. “You two deserve each other.” 

Jordan opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it. The way he smells, he doesn’t really need to say anything, but Derek is rapidly realizing he’s the kind of person who does anyway. “What.”

“I’m going to kill her when I see her again,” Derek says, since if they have to talk about it…yeah. “And—look, I’m her brother, I have to say you hurt her and even if you’re a hellhound, we’ll figure out something. But also, I don’t want to see it.”

“I—have no idea what you’re talking about—the last thing I need in my life right now is leveling up on property destruction—goddamn it,” Jordan sputters, twisting away. He takes out his phone, stepping away from the counter, and then about-faces. “Scott.”

Derek would know something was wrong just from the way Scott goes still. “Where are they?”

“I—shit, hang on, let me—” Jordan hastily calls someone, then jams his phone against his ear. “Laura—Laura, what—okay, I’m with Scott and your brother, we can be over in—what? No, I’m coming over, you don’t know—wait, what? He—the preserve? They’re—but _where_?”

Laura’s not panicky-sounding. She’s not letting Jordan stop her, but she’s doing that by talking over him until he stops, not by yelling or crying. She’s saying Stiles is having some kind of fit, and Peter is there and he’s communing with Stiles or something, Derek doesn’t understand what that means, but anyway, Stiles and Peter know that Stiles’ dad and Talia are trapped by the demon in the preserve. And it’s supposed to be weak today, that’s what everybody has been saying, but it’s _not_.

Scott’s already run out into the other room, and by the time Laura finishes, he’s come back with an armful of stuff. Jordan’s things—Jordan starts clipping stuff back onto his belt—some other things that Scott is shoving into a backpack. “Who’s on shift?” Scott asks.

Jordan is searching for paper at the table but stops when Derek shows the scrap where he’s already written what Laura can tell them about how to find Stiles’ dad and Derek’s mother. “Nobody,” Jordan snaps, lowering the phone. “Nobody, we were all up last night, and you and I are both maxed out, Scott. And you know where that is, we can’t just—”

“I’m coming,” Derek says.

“Great, but Laura can’t, because she’s still trying to snap Peter and Stiles out of it,” Jordan says. “You’re not going to be enough. Who—we can get Allison, right? And—”

Scott grimaces and Derek starts to say that Allison would definitely come, whatever else she and Scott have going on. Except for Derek to say that, without even having to think about it—Derek catches himself and Scott is talking, anyway. “Kali’s probably around. I’ll…I’ll try her. And Marin.”

“Oh, great,” Jordan says unenthusiastically. He presses the side of his phone against his nose, then shakes himself. “Fine. Try them. I’ll go get the car around.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The show pretty much lost me with Rafael when they had him try to question a _minor_ without any kind of legal representation or guardian present, and then did it again. And then had him hang around even though, with his own son clearly involved, he should have immediately reported a conflict of interest and been replaced by another agent. Hollywood Law at its (non) finest. Say bye to all the testimony as not admissible and hello to a massive, embarrassing, slamdunk lawsuit for violating basic due process rights. TW doesn't require suspension of disbelief so much as suspension of anything that gets in the way of moving the story from Plot Point A to Plot Point B.
> 
> But this series is somewhat about trying out characters I normally don't even want to try and bother rehabbing, so let's give him some motivations that make sense.
> 
> So, Jordan's fully up to speed here, but is it really better to know everything that's going on, Jordan? That's how role-reversal is playing out with his character.
> 
> Speaking of role-reversal, I go back and forth on whether Derek is the Stiles or the Allison of this universe.


	14. Chapter 14

Even though she takes the utility stairwell, Talia can’t get out to the hospital parking lot before John drives off. She stands there, seething at the stink of his car’s exhaust, and then she ducks behind a dumpster and strips and full-shifts. Then, as a wolf, she runs after him.

Wolf-form is easier to hide from others, even in an urban setting. She can sling her body below the sweep of many cameras, or smoothly thread it through holes that her human form would require jerking and prying to fit through. It’s also faster and can jump higher. But what it can’t do, as she’s rudely reminded of once they reach the edge of town, is wave a hand.

Talia jumps up onto what should be a very visible rock outcropping, except the moment she does, John veers away, off the pavement and onto a dirt road. She briefly considers howling, then rejects that since she’s still hoping all she needs to do is attract John’s attention, rather than that of everything else in the neighborhood. So she slips off the rock and lopes after him.

This far out, she at least can run right behind the car, assuming that sooner or later, the man will spot her in the rearview mirror. Morning’s well underway, and even in the dense tree cover, light is starting to seep through and spread out. She even bounces up occasionally, snapping her teeth together, like some idiotic circus animal. But John keeps driving.

He’s not speeding up so somehow, he must not see her. Or he does, but he’s relying on the fact that the trees have closed in so tight around the road that fresh paint flecks regularly glint off the underbrush. If Talia wants to overtake him, either she can go over the top and risk him crashing the car, or she can jump into the woods and fight her way through it to come out ahead.

Or maybe, she suddenly thinks, she can shift to two-legged form and grab his bumper, and drag the car into stopping. Yes, that’s the way that is most likely to leave them with a still-operational vehicle.

She can’t shift and maintain her speed, so she does have to slow down for a few paces. And as if he _is_ watching her, John immediately brakes, so that half-shifted, Talia ends up throwing herself into the brush to avoid smashing into the back. Snarling, stinging cuts opening and closing all over her, Talia yanks her hair out of the bush that’d snagged it and then storms back into the road. “John! John, what do you—”

It’s not the road anymore. The car is there, but the dirt track is gone and she’s surrounded by pristine woods that don’t seem to have ever been touched by people. The moss on the trunks is so thick that when she presses her fingers into it, she leaves dents rather than bare, flaked-off patches. And—she pauses and sniffs deeply. It doesn’t smell like a damn thing.

Talia promptly drops back into wolf-form. When she’s like that, some types of magic just don’t…don’t bend the way they would around her human form. Her eyes and nose and ears pick out the mismatched angles, the distorted places where joins have been forced. And this fact is, she thinks, slinking around the car, much more why full-shifters are lionized by other werewolves, than just the shift itself.

The car is empty, of course. She figured as much, but when she gets up to the driver’s side window, she still puts her paws on the glass and presses her nose against the top, making sure that’s not also an illusion. But no, no fresh warm body within.

She drops back down and that’s when she spots it, the twisting, unnatural way that one large trunk near the left headlight is bulging into the road. Talia rounds the front of the car, but keeps her distance from the distortion for now. While she’s not as well-versed in magic as her brother, she knows enough to know not to just go charging blindly into it.

Besides, the distortion seems to be moving. She tests this by glancing away and then back, and when she does, the twist has gone from one side of the trunk to the other. Then farther, till the tree is straight but the space immediately next to it ripples as if the air has become glass in a funhouse mirror. It’s only moving sideways, not forward, so Talia risks walking up till her muzzle is only inches away from the distortion.

This close, her vision is doubling: a bush a few yards away is suddenly two bushes, each overlapping as if one’s been painted on the other. Then they snap together into a unified one—until she relaxes her sight and lets the edges go fuzzy, and the bushes begin to diverge. They’re not identical, she realizes. The underlying one has less leaves, and browner ones. And that’s when she thinks, _fall, it was fall when we left_.

And just like that, the world she’s in fails. Everything doubles up and splits, like claws shredding through an intervening film, and then Talia’s left standing on the top of the hill behind her old house, looking down at it, and every single hair on her body is standing on end.

It’s not that the house is even still there, unnerving though that is. Or that all of the windows are blazing with light. Or that it’s nighttime here, and all that light doesn’t do anything to pierce the darkness. It’s that this is not the real world. She knows that. This is the illusion, going back to that night, and she remembers this and she is standing on the edge of it, about to willingly walk in. Her alpha power lets her do this, lets her pick between the true and the false, and for a second, she honestly wishes it didn’t.

But she has to, because down on the back porch she can see John and a woman talking.

The woman is young and dark-haired, dressed in a bathrobe that’s higher on one shoulder than the other, as if she’d pulled it on in a hurry. She keeps smiling and trying to touch John on the shoulder and chest; he doesn’t avoid her, but he doesn’t move towards her either, and every time, her fingertips don’t quite make it. She looks like the Claudia Stilinski that Talia remembers, but of course she’s not.

Talia’s well-hidden in the brush and she could probably stay that way all down the hillside, till she’s within easy lunging range. Which obviously is what the demon building this illusion wants her to do, so she doesn’t do that. Instead she rears up on two legs, draws back her shifting foreleg, and then rams the newly-rearranged bones of her fist into a nearby tree.

The _crack_ of it rings out through the woods. Down below, Talia sees John’s head go up, but then the tree gets in the way. Gravity should be making it fall the other way, towards the house, but this whole world is made-up and of course it doesn’t work like that.

Talia dodges, then scrambles atop the trunk, four-footed once again. The bark under her paws _squirms_ , making her think of sucking mud, and she rips herself up into the air, diving for the next tree over. The branches immediately turn into gnarled corpse fingers reaching for her and she snarls, shifts again. Comes down fangs and claws first, ripping into the humanized twigs like the carnivore she is. This isn’t real, it’s just a bunch of horror-movie clichés taken out of her head and she just needs to keep moving, keep the demon trying to guess what scares her. The secret of magic is that really, it’s just as predictable as anything else once you learn the rules, Peter had once told her.

Of course, he then followed that up with a rant about the short attention span of her children and did she remember druids think attempted homicide is a valid character-building exercise, and then they’d gotten into an argument about whether werewolf challenges and insane mages are really qualitatively different in that area. God, her brother’s such a hair-splitter sometimes. 

Speaking of, the next thing Talia sees when she wrenches herself out of the trees is Peter. Staggering towards her, clutching at his arm, blood all over his face. “Talia,” he’s gasping. “Talia, _why_? You left me!”

She leaps at him. Doesn’t hesitate. Her heart—her heart twists up into the back of her throat, pounding the air, bruising out an acid taste that washes over her tongue, but it’s not her goddamn brother. And so she rips right into his face and he goes down and he’s transforming under her claws, body twisting and fur rippling over huge bulging muscles, and when his head comes up again, he’s got red eyes. She’s already got her claws in his throat.

He falls to the ground, life gurgling out of him, and she feels sick but sheer momentum keeps her plunging down the hill away from him. Besides, it’s not real, Peter was never alpha and she has never, ever left him behind. What you fear isn’t what’s actually happened.

She needs to remember that, because the next one who pops up is her ex. Smirking at her, one arm pressing a small bundled oblong across his chest, his other hand splayed to clutch at the end of it. An end that’s twisting under the cloth, twisting even as he sinks in his claws and rivulets of blood start to stripe the blanket and Talia roars before the goddamn demon can make the child scream. Roars her fury, because that’s better to give it than fear, and because she absolutely hates having to do what she does next: turn her back on her ex and keep on running.

A thin, terrified wail rises up behind her and in spite of herself, Talia slows. It’s so much like Cora, Cora would scream like that at night, and even though she knows it isn’t real and it didn’t happen either, never happened, she never let it, the urge to turn on her ex all over again—

“Talia!” John aims a gun at her.

She nearly stands and swats it out of his hand, and the only reason she doesn’t is because the smell of blood suddenly chokes her. _Smell_. Real.

Just in time, she swerves around him, and instead he fires over her head. The wail suddenly stops, and with it goes the darkness. It’s day, sunbeams playing off the ferns, leaves crackling under her paws—she’d missed that, she suddenly realizes, that and all the other minor noises of the woods—and behind John the house is still there, but it’s scorched and decrepit and empty.

Talia skids to a stop, coming off one hindleg, and then picks herself up and shakes off the accumulated dirt. She has a twig jammed into her left leg and she yanks it out, grimacing against the brief spark of pain, before she looks up.

“What the…what the hell are you doing?” John says. He’s coming towards her, gun down at his side, other hand up and pushing at his hair.

“Don’t sacrifice yourself to her,” Talia snaps, and then coughs hard. Her vocal cords finally finish shifting to human. “That’s not how it works, it’s not going to save this town or your son, it’s just going to make her stronger—”

“Yeah, I know that,” John says, as if he has any reason to be annoyed.

Talia starts to snap again, but then a chill cuts through her, tamping down on the fight urges still boiling her blood. She straightens up and takes a good look at John.

“What are you—Jesus,” John mutters, his eyes dropping slightly and then ripping themselves back up to her face. He takes a half-step back and that’s when she sees the severed legs on the ground behind him. They look thin and dried-out even from here; the blood-scent that she’d caught is coming from a fresh cut somewhere in the vicinity of John’s hand. “What the hell, did—wait, did Marin get you? Did she send you after me?”

“The _last_ thing she wants me to do is help you, in my opinion,” Talia says after studying him. He’s surprised, annoyed, but he doesn’t smell…smell urgent about it, as if she’d interrupted him doing something he had to finish. “It was more you, asking me to get your son out of town. Because giving yourself to a demon is absolutely going to get him to drop this fight and forget about it, and—John, I’m a _werewolf_. Where am I going to carry clothes?”

John, eyes still averted, takes off his coat. Because of course he does. He at least just tosses it to her rather than trying to be a gentleman and come wrap it over her shoulders. “Well, when Stiles wasn’t out every night, he was playing around with some rescue-dog harnesses and…anyway, I think we’ve got a misunderstanding here. I came out to get Gerard’s body, like I told you.”

“Well, I was supposed to go with you,” Talia mutters. She does put on the coat. It’s breezy. It has nothing to do with them standing in the shadow of her old, demon-haunted house, and her irrationally wanting something between that and her skin. 

“You weren’t there when I came to get you,” John says.

“But Kali—” Talia starts. Then presses her lips together. They might not be in the illusion anymore, but she hardly thinks they’re alone, and she needs to watch her words and thoughts. “I saw you talking to your wife.”

John tenses as well, but much to her surprise, it’s not because he’s taking offense to her words. If anything, she thinks she sees a hint of that…that weary knowledge, verging on gallows humor, that means he knows exactly which buttons she’s trying to push. Then he turns very deliberately and looks at the house, and she understands they are on the same page.

“I was talking to the demon,” John says. He clearly doesn’t enjoy what he’s saying, but isn’t trying to soften it. “It looks like her because it’s got parts of her. The exorcism didn’t get rid of it but it nailed the demon down, made it—made it closer to human, and she was the one leading the ritual so…it can’t hurt me. I can come here—so can Stiles. And look, to get this straight, we’re not helping it. I can’t just drag people away from it either. But I can make it back off—”

“You’re wrong about that. About it not being able to hurt you,” Talia says. She breathes in, then out. Catalogues everything she smells. Nothing’s out of place, but…she listens, too. And tugs John’s coat tightly around herself, pushes her toes deep into the soil, letting the moisture in it well up against her skin. Grounds herself. “Look, when my family came here, they made sacrifices. The druids think they know what happened, but it’s all wrong. It’s not that we killed people to get the power here. I know that’s what everyone’s done since then, but that _first time_ , that’s not what happened.”

The moment Talia says ‘sacrifice,’ John jerks. Then he quicksteps forward, swearing, and grabs her roughly by the arm. “Not here,” he says. “Don’t think about it. Goddamn it, I just told you, I just can hold it off, I can’t stop it and it can—”

“Why do you think you can hold it off?” Talia asks.

John yanks her a couple feet, then stops again. Looks over his shoulder at the dead body. “Because I was her damn husband and she’s still—she’s not in there, not really, but this magic bullshit is such a goddamn mess and—look, I’m not talking about this right now.”

“You can do it because she _is_ there. Enough of her is that you can walk up and talk to her and you might be telling yourself it’s the demon and it’s just trying to manipulate your emotions. And you’re right, but you’re also wrong,” Talia says. When John makes as if to go back for the body, she grabs _his_ arm and pulls him around to look at her. She knows the demon is listening but honestly, the chances that the demon doesn’t know this already? Zero. Zero, or John wouldn’t be out here right now, and that’s why it’s more important that he understands this before anything else happens. “You went and talked to her and she gave up the body before she was done because you told her if she didn’t—if she didn’t—I know what this is, John. You want me to take your son because it’s not the _demon_ who might kill you.”

“Well, so what?” John growls. He suddenly steps into her, so they’re almost nose to nose. He’s taller than her. She knows she’s stronger, but only physically; his anger is like standing at the edge of an oven and even she’s blistering. “There’s no other way. We’ve tried everything, damn it, and I can’t let it take back what I’ve got, and I can’t kill it, and—”

“But that’s what I’m saying, John. You’re already giving back to it,” Talia says. It fits now. Fits so well that despite herself, she can’t _not_ see it in her head. “You’re giving back your—your family. You’re coming to it, just like this house is coming back together. It wants your family _together_ , not dead, and you’re doing that every time you come here. And if it doesn’t want you dead, it’s not going to _leave_ you dead.”

And she can see the moment he realizes what she means. His mouth opens a little and his gaze turns inward, and his arm under her fingers…Talia nearly lets go. Then catches herself and doesn’t, and instead looks down to find the silver tattoos blooming all over his wrist and the back of his hand.

She can feel them too, pulsing like his veins, but cool where they’re slightly warmer than the surrounding skin. Talia doesn’t know what that means, if it’s good or bad, and she shakes John without thinking. His eyelids flutter, then snap open and stare at her. Then past her.

“ _Shit_ ,” he says.

Talia turns but John suddenly has an arm around her waist, slinging her past him and towards the woods at the front of the house. His fingers drag deep grooves over her shoulder, scrabble at her back, and then he lunges up next to her and grabs her elbow.

“Go, go,” he says, as all around them, the darkness comes back down. “Go, I can’t—why the _hell_ can’t I—I can’t hold it— _go_.”

It’s like someone in the sky has upended a bowl of ink, Talia realizes as she and John sprint up the hill. She can see where John’s trying to push it back, the strips where the dark is held up and the real is still shining through. But it’s only ever temporary. The patches flex and bend and beside her, Talia can hear the same strain in John’s breathing. Then he gasps, and with his gasp, the dark presses closer to the ground.

“Hold me,” Talia grunts. She yanks at John’s hand till it’s on her back, under the coat, and then slaps it till she gets John’s attention. “ _Hold_. Hold on.”

He just barely sucks his breath in acknowledgement and then she full-shifts. His hand slips, but then he throws himself into her and she feels his fingers clench in her fur. They’re faster that way—but not fast enough. Just before the top of the hill, the darkness reaches the ground. Talia swerves away, snarling, and black tendrils stretch after her.

“Think,” John puffs into her ear. He stumbles along as best he can, dragged more than running, but he does hold on. “Think about—about somewhere—somewhere to hide. Somewhere you remember, give that to me, just give that—”

Somewhere even the dark can’t cross. Yes. She remembers. And then, just as the dark becomes all-encompassing, the ground gives out under Talia’s feet and she and John both fall.

* * *

“Great,” John says, once they’re sitting up with the flickering light of his phone between them. “Right where this all started.”

“Well, that’s the point,” Talia says, and she doesn’t really bother to hide how irritated she sounds. She did her best, with an incredibly powerful demon after them, and if he had any better ideas, he wouldn’t have asked her. “It was trapped here for over seventy years. The Nemeton’s the last place it wants to come back to.”

John presses his lips together, but doesn’t keep whining. Instead he pushes himself up against the side of the cellar and glances over himself. Rubs at the side of his head, leaving a pale pink trace behind in his hair, and then slowly stretches out his legs. His right knee is clearly giving him trouble and he bends that leg, bringing up the joint to feel gingerly at it.

“Besides, even though the Nemeton’s gone, things like that—their graves still have power. It’ll keep the demon off till we can figure out something,” Talia says.

She gets to her own feet, tugging up John’s coat when it slides off one shoulder. Catches him twitching away from her out of the corner of her eye, and rolls her eyes. But she does zip up the coat so that it’ll give her breasts some support—not so much for his sense of decency as because she aches all over and even one less is welcome relief.

Then she explores the space. It’s not quite as she remembers it: the thick wooden doors that had been hidden by the base of the Nemeton have been replaced by metal ones. For a second she’s afraid for their air supply, but then she concentrates and realizes she can hear air whistling through a metal pipe in one corner of the room.

“We tore up the roots and everything, but we didn’t realize it was the tree. We thought it was the location, so we got it ready in case we could catch the demon again and bottle it back up,” John says. He stays where he is, continuing to take stock of himself, but when Talia wanders over to the whistling corner, he picks up his phone and switches to flashlight mode and points out the ventilation grate. “By the time we realized that wasn’t going to happen, Deaton was here and he talked us into just locking it up. Said something like that too—it’s still sacred and we shouldn’t just fill it in.”

The air flow feels decently strong, but there is only the one grate. Talia has to go up on her toes to look through it and when she does, she feels scratches around the edge of the grate. She traces out one, recognizes it as a protective symbol, and then turns around and goes back to the doors and tests their give, making sure that if they need to, she can break through them.

“I don’t get reception down here, but I think…I’m pretty sure Stiles picked up on this,” John says. He’s silent for nearly a minute. “When he wakes up, he’ll get people over here.”

“Wakes up?” Talia says, twisting around.

John smells guilty and angry. He doesn’t quite throw his phone down beside him, but he’s not exactly treating it like their only source of light, since she can’t detect any hint he’s a smoker. “It’s a lot rougher on him, when it acts up. I’m guessing because he’s actually blood family, and I was just married to her, but—what’d you mean, it wants my family back together?”

“Why it’s sitting out in my house,” Talia says. She and John stare at each other for a couple minutes. He’s waiting for her to go on, oddly patient despite the way his mouth is twisted, and she…she feels guilty too, for some reason. Sure, she’d have to be a coldhearted bitch to not feel pity over how terrible the man’s life it, but it’s not like that’s her fault.

Then again, she thinks, before shaking her head so that can’t go where she thinks it’s going.

“I didn’t think it still mattered, but when my family first set up here, I think what they did to claim this place—I think that’s what the demon is really after.” Talia hesitates, then sits down across from John. “This is at least half legend, all right, but the first alpha killed her whole family here.”

John draws in a slow breath, but it’s more thoughtful than shocked. “How come?”

“Because they asked her to,” Talia says after a moment. She catches herself pulling the coat tight around her sides, but only because an inside zipper scratches at her breast. She makes herself loosen up. “I don’t think I ever heard the specifics—maybe it’s been too long and we forgot, but they were in danger, hunters or something like that, and they knew not all of them could live. But the pack had to, and she was alpha, and…and she was pregnant, too. So they…if an alpha kills her own pack—”

“Yeah, they get more powerful. We almost had to deal with that, I know about it,” John says. “Basically a kind of blood magic, right?”

He doesn’t offer up that dismissively, but almost as if he’s trying to hold out a hand, because he can tell she’s hesitating. Which is odd, since Talia doesn’t think she’d actually hesitated, but she does feel…eased. The words aren’t any nicer to say, but they don’t feel so leaden on her tongue.

“Yes. It is. And that has repercussions, you know. Getting power that way, it tends not to sit easily in you. You aren’t…it’s harder to remember who you are,” she goes on. “She knew that, that alpha. So when she had enough of a new pack, she killed herself and they buried her with her old pack. It—that—it leaves a mark, that kind of thing. On the place where it happened.”

John purses his lips as if he’s going to ask a question, but then shifts himself back against the wall. He grunts instead, his eyes drifting from her to the wall behind her, and then up to the trapdoor over their heads. The silver tattooing starts to spread over his arms and Talia stiffens, but then John holds up one hand.

“It’s backed off,” he mutters. His eyes are going silver too. “Just…trying to see if I can…I don’t want it to talk to Stiles. Especially since it’s probably listening in on this.”

“Is he with anyone? They’d know not to let him—”

A sharp noise comes from John. It takes a moment for Talia to realize it was supposed to be a chuckle. “He’s the last person who’d cooperate with it. He’s always—that’s why I’m worried, he’s always letting it get under his skin, get him riled up. I’m pretty sure that just feeds it too.”

“Maybe. But if you’re angry at it, you won’t go over to it,” Talia says. “You need to stay angry.”

“You have a one-track mind,” John snaps, and when he looks at her, the silver’s cleared up from his eyes. He shoves himself against the wall again, then bites his grimace in half, putting his hand on his knee. “I _am_ angry. I’m angry that my son’s spent more of his life fighting this than not fighting it, I’m angry that it’s taken everything good about my wife and—I’m angry that I _hate_ my wife now. All right? You don’t have to tell me about being angry.”

Talia’s argumentative. She thinks she’d be that way even if she wasn’t an alpha—look at Peter, he keeps right up with her, and with anyone else who’s oblivious enough to challenge his expertise on something. She can’t help herself, she sees somebody else rising to the bait and even if she’s set it, she wants to go for it too.

But she tries not to. She does, because they’re stuck in a Nemeton root-cellar because that’s honestly the safest place in this town she could remember, since a demon’s taken over her family’s house because her family _literally _set the blueprint for blood magic in this town. Because even moving across the country couldn’t shake them free of their past, and all the work she and Peter and her children have put into starting new, all of it, well, it’s just a bunch of wasted shit.__

__“You really thought I was going to let her take me?” John says suddenly._ _

__“Well, suicide makes a little more sense, now that I have a second to think about it, but you could take Stiles out of town first and then do that,” Talia snaps back. “Hell, you could probably even make it look like natural causes, so he doesn’t feel so bad.”_ _

__John blinks hard, then tips his head a little, looking at her. “I guess I should be having you vet all my ideas for dying?”_ _

__“I don’t know, are you asking?” Talia asks. Then she stops—she’d started pacing without realizing it—and twists around and looks at him. Well, smells him, really. “Seriously?”_ _

__“I literally do not know what else to do, and you’re—I don’t know, are you supposed to be this upset? We didn’t even really know each other,” John says, as the corners of his mouth try not to curl and fail. He does rub at his mouth with one hand, but then he gives up on that too and just laughs into his lap. “Oh, God, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.”_ _

__His laugh’s that hard, brittle kind people on battlefields and morgues use, when they’re trying to dissociate themselves from what’s under their hands, slicking up the fingers, but only for a second. Then it gets thinner, softer, and he starts shaking his head in a way that draws Talia a step closer before she catches herself._ _

__John stops laughing. Keeps his head down for another second, and then his shoulders heave and he blows out his breath and looks up. Talia…looks back. Because he’s right, they don’t really know each other, and she will hug and snuggle her family all the time—especially when Peter makes _that_ face—but outside of them she’s not that type. And at the same time, she thinks…she thinks that John seems as if he’s tried hard, and he’s certainly done more than most would, and he does love his son. And it just seems wrong that he hasn’t gotten any farther than here._ _

__“You did talk to Marin, right?” John asks. When Talia nods, a faint look of disgust crosses his face, but otherwise he stays calm. “Yeah, this blood magic stuff, eye for an eye is pretty much what it boils down to, according to her and Alan. I don’t buy it. If that was it, then what Kali and her Emissary tried to pull should’ve done it.”_ _

__“It’s not,” Talia says after a moment. “My family—”_ _

__“Yeah, I heard you. I’m—I’m just kind of tired, but I haven’t gone deaf,” John says. The way he sighs out the words softens them. “But there is something about my family, and what you’re saying and what the druids told me do match up there. Right? That’s what you mean?”_ _

__Talia starts to say ‘yes’ and then doesn’t, because…it is what she means, but then John’s going to ask her what _exactly_ that means, and that part, she doesn’t know. She knows this is all connected, knows it the way that she’d step into her house and know without even thinking about it which of her family are home just from the heartbeats. But exactly how this all works together, that she doesn’t know. She can’t answer the questions she knows he’s going to have, and she doesn’t…she doesn’t think she wants to. _ _

__Goddamn it, _she_ doesn’t know now. The whole point of coming here was to just get her daughter back. It wasn’t to explore her damn roots, or to try and help the people here, no matter how sorry she feels for them. She’s supposed to be the one who makes those coldblooded decisions, for the good of _her_ family. Keep them away from the dangers. And yet—and yet, she thinks. Here’s a man who’s stared down a demon wearing his wife’s face for years and years, who’s seen his son’s life eaten away by fighting it, and still, he wants to know what she thinks. He’s sincere about that._ _

__She wants to level with him. Maybe she even wants to help him. Shit._ _

__“So this demon, it thinks if it copies your first alpha, it’ll be able to do the same thing,” John goes on. “Pull its pack together? But does that even make any sense? Why would a demon want a pack, or a family?”_ _

__“Because you’re lonely,” Talia says. She pauses, then slowly crouches down so that they’re looking each other in the eye. “If I were a demon, that’s why. And that might be the key—they were willing the first time, right? They were all willing. She didn’t just kill them, they came to her. So at the end, they were together.”_ _

__“But this damn thing doesn’t want to die for me or Stiles,” John says sharply. “What the hell does it think we’re coming together for?”_ _

__“It’s making a house,” Talia says, after a long pause._ _

__John’s eyes glitter, and for a second she thinks they’ll silver over again. They don’t, but the muscles of his jaw flex once, slowly, before he speaks again. “Does it actually think we’ll be happy living there with it? In…what, some kind of Twilight Zone version of this town, made up of all the people it’s killed? _Knowing_ that?”_ _

__She can’t answer that one for him, and she doesn’t try. Instead she takes a seat on the floor, getting her weight off her aching feet. She’s tired. Her spine feels like it’s made of softening lead, and the tips of her fingers and toes have a nagging raw burn; she must have had claws ripped out or broken and then regrown during the fight. Multiple times._ _

__“If you want to take a nap, you can,” John says. When she looks up, he shrugs and waves around them. “I’ll keep watch. I don’t exactly sleep these days.”_ _

__“That’s not good for you, you know,” Talia says. She wraps her arms around her knees, then rubs at the bridge of her nose. “I ran into Kali at the hospital. She told me you were already on your way—you must’ve come right after. I ran down to the parking lot but came out the wrong door and had to run around, couldn’t remember how the hospital was laid out—”_ _

__“Well, they also built an extension four years ago,” John says. Then he pushes himself off the wall and crawls over, still favoring his one knee. At the same time, he unbuttons his shirt and strips it off, leaving him in just a white tee, and hands over it over. “Lie down, get your head on this and just catch a couple minutes’ rest. You’re going to be carrying me out of here, so…”_ _

__Talia snorts, then smiles. “You ever think maybe you’re just too stubborn for it to take?”_ _

__“I don’t think, I’ve had it say that to me, a lot,” John says dryly. His mouth twists savagely, and for a second Talia thinks they’re going back to arguing. But then he breathes out slowly and just pushes his wadded-up shirt across the ground. He leaves it by her hip, then pulls back to get his weight off his knees. “Look, the whole killing myself idea—”_ _

__“Don’t,” Talia says. She pauses, as surprised as he looks, and then lets it…lets it sink in, that sudden fierce flare of emotion. “I’ll take your son along, but I’m not going to lie to him. I’m going to tell him exactly what you did, and if he ends up hating you, I’m not going to disagree.”_ _

__John jerks up his chin, angry again, and then he holds that frown. Stares at her till it slides just a little, just into the edge of a rough, dark amusement. “You really know how to dig in.”_ _

__“I didn’t waste the fourteen years away from here,” Talia says. Stops for a second, feeling the way her sarcasm is turning, and then allows it. “Not to just come back and get your kid dumped on me, bigger and more traumatized, especially when I still have one teenager at home. Look, I’ll lie down if you do, too. And don’t go to sleep if you don’t want to, I’m just saying lie down. It’s not like you’re going to see it coming any better sitting over there.”_ _

__Then she twists over and lies down on her side. She’s facing John, with one arm trailing to grab his foot if he decides to run off, but he doesn’t. He does look at her for a bit, as if he doesn’t know whether to roll his eyes or get angry. Then he glances up over his head. Sighs, looks at her again, and…lies down next to her, on his back._ _

__“Okay, have it your way,” he says._ _

__“It’ll be all right, John,” Talia says. She senses him tensing and wonders if she’s overstepped, played too fast and loose. And then he exhales, deep and long, and she ends up breathing along with him. “It’s my family too, you know. I’ve been here, where you are. And—”_ _

__“You’re not going to say it’ll be all right again,” John mutters._ _

__“No.” Talia shifts her hip off a pebble, then tugs up the collar of John’s coat to her jaw. “No, but…we got out. We got out. Think about that, too. We made that house, and we got out of it once. Okay?”_ _

__John doesn’t say ‘okay’ back, but he also doesn’t contradict her. When she sneaks a glance over, he’s looking straight ahead. His eyes are normal, and when she shifts, she hears his heartbeat skip once. But…she leaves it, for now. For once._ _

__* * *_ _

__Talia doesn’t doze off. Her instincts are too tightly wound for that, and whatever John says about keeping an eye out, she can’t bring herself to relax. It’s not that she thinks he’ll let the demon sneak up on them, but just that…that if she does close her eyes, she isn’t sure what might have changed when she opens them again. This isn’t her world—she can’t ground herself in it, can’t trust that small things like the grit of dirt under her, or the smell of damp decaying wood, that those won’t disappear when she’s not looking. She’s adaptable but she also needs something to sink her claws into. She needs a place to stand._ _

__But she is tired. She’s not closing her eyes, but she drifts into a half-aware state, where things dim and slur but never quite go out._ _

__Then she starts. She lifts her head and John’s heartbeat slows again. He’s still lying next to her, staring at the ceiling, and as she starts to ask, he reaches over and grabs her arm. “Think it’s them,” he says._ _

__His eyes aren’t silvered, and when she looks down, the tattoos aren’t on his arms either. “What is?”_ _

__John points his chin towards the trapdoor. “The string. You see that?”_ _

__Talia twists around, frowning, and…yes, she does. Red threads, some knotted, some not, dangling from the roof like tree roots. They twist slightly and she bites back a pulse of revulsion, thinking how much they look like worms. She looks at John again and he’s sitting up, then getting to his knees. He studies the threads, then pulls her over about a foot. Then pushes back a few inches, centering them in the middle of some kind of pattern._ _

__She can’t see it, but she can see how the threads are stretching further and further down. The nausea comes back, more strongly; she swallows hard and in the middle of the swallow, John abruptly wraps his arm around her shoulders. His eyes are turning silver now. “Ignore it, it’s not real, it’s just—it’s like a tug of war, things can’t figure out whether they want to be like out there or like in here.”_ _

__That doesn’t make any sense. And then it does, when in the corner of her eye, Talia glimpses the walls _writhing_. Her twisting stomach starts to hurt and she clamps one hand over it, trying to control her breathing. She knows it’s not real, but it still—_ _

__“ _You’re_ real,” John says, voice low and iron-braced. “You’re real. Don’t let it fool you.”_ _

__“That’s the problem,” Talia says through gritted teeth. “I know that—I can see that. I can _see_ it stretching, damn it, I’m an alpha, I can’t not see it—”_ _

__“Well, then close your eyes. You don’t have to see it,” John says. He pauses, then lets out an aggravated noise at the same time he moves his arm down to her waist. Initially she thinks he’s just trying to keep hold of her, but then he forces his fingers under her hand. “I get it, last thing that makes sense, but—I’m here, you can grab hold of this. You can feel me. If it gets too rough, you can stick in your claws and hang on, okay? You’ll have this no matter what.”_ _

__He never said he heals immediately, Talia starts to say, but then things get _sideways_._ _

__The red threads in the ceiling suddenly pull straight as if somebody’s got both ends, and then the ceiling tears like paper, each thread peeling away a shard. She ducks her head from the expected fallout, except instead it feels like she’s being thrown _up_ and silver flashes all around her and the only—the _only_ thing Talia has to weigh her down is the smell of fresh blood. Hot and coppery and she fills her lungs with it and she’s not a psychopath. She’s a killer, all werewolves are sooner or later, but she kills for reasons and not joy. But the smell of blood right then, that smell is the reason she is._ _

__And then Talia heaves out all of the air in her lungs. Leaves crunch under her hands. She moves one and the leaves stick to it because her fingers are wet. Bloody, with bits of red string sticking to them. She shakes her head, dazed, and looks over and John is holding his bleeding arm to his chest, grimacing._ _

__“Shit,” Talia says._ _

__“Didn’t hit a vein and I told you to—” John stops and stares at the strip Talia’s forcing around his arm. Then exhales irritably. “Jesus, first my car and now my coat?”_ _

__“Well—your shirt didn’t come up!” Talia snaps. And gets halfway through tearing another strip from the other sleeve when suddenly the drumming of heartbeats all around them fills her ears. She whips around, lowering her head into a crouch, and her son stares back at her._ _

__“Mom?” Derek says, as the world blurs again. “Mom!”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fact that many animals can see parts of the light spectrum that humans can't is something that really is not touched on nearly as much as it should be. Like what if magic is invisible to visible light, but affects the UV spectrum? Stuff like that.
> 
> There has to be a reason why killing your betas is normally frowned upon and only fringe elements like the canonical Alpha Pack do it, otherwise you'd think it'd be a lot more widespread and werewolf-world would be all, "There can only be one!" And given how nobody really acts like it on the show, I do not think "pack being closer than family" is that reason. 
> 
> I don't know, I just like the idea that half of Peter and Talia's dynamic is because Talia's like a cat lady with a grumpy cat, always cuddling him against his will.
> 
> One particular episode of the Twilight Zone is relevant here: ["It's a Good Life"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Good_Life_\(The_Twilight_Zone\)).


	15. Chapter 15

There’s a flash of silver and a nauseatingly untethered up-jerk in Peter’s gut, and then, suddenly, he’s on his feet, blinking at the world.

It’s not real, of course. But he was expecting—

“Smashed into the ground, _Matrix_ -style? Or just floating around in some kind of surreal tentacle landscape?” says Stiles, or whatever is trying to look like Stiles.

They’re standing in Peter’s old house, in the kitchen. It’s a perfect rendition, right down to the bitten-off corner on one end of the counter, a relic of an argument between his father and a visiting alpha. “You’re not real,” Peter says. He reaches out and touches the counter. “This isn’t either. It never looked this homey.”

It frowns at him as if they aren’t speaking the same language. And they aren’t, after all: it wants to convince him, so it’s taken the memories out of his head and presented a loving recreation of them. But Peter never loved his old house. He was possessive of it, protective of it, but love? Hardly. Much less this burnished-gold version, where all of the nicks and scratches glow faintly, marks of a well-used place rather than a well-abused one.

The air shivers around Peter, stirring unease in his stomach, but then everything settles again. Smart, he thinks. No point in changing the pretty picture now, when it’d just be confirming his point.

But then it changes Stiles. Wipes him away, Peter blinks and then a woman is standing in Stiles’ place. She’s a little younger than Talia, with dark hair and a family resemblance to Stiles except for the eyes, which are…off. Too warm, too welcoming, just like the room they’re standing in. None of that affection is for Peter, and that by itself sends a chill through him.

“Do we have to be always lost in the past?” it asks him. “Can’t we start over? Isn’t that why your family left?”

“As a matter of fact, my family left because of a power-hungry maniac who just happened to have a pack of trained hunters at his disposal,” Peter says. They’re at opposite ends of the kitchen island, and he puts more space between them, drifting from the island towards the cabinets where the old fireplace—

He turns around. _Nothing personal_ , he remembers Scott warning him. But he doesn’t even remember—he doesn’t even know what this house used to be. She can’t do anything about that.

“I’m not here to kill,” it says. Then tucks its chin down into a soft, deprecating laugh at the way he _has_ to stare at her. “Well, we all do what we must, don’t we? But I’m not here only for that. I’m here for my family, Peter. Just like you. When your niece was in trouble, you came right away. Didn’t you?”

“I don’t see the point in answering questions that you already know the answer to,” Peter says after a moment.

“I’m not asking you for anything, Peter,” it says. It even sighs, as if frustrated by his lack of understanding. “I just thought, since you’re interested, we might talk.”

He hums in acknowledgment but continues to walk slowly around his end of the kitchen. Now that the illusion is in place, it doesn’t seem to be in the mood to be aggressive, and he is interested. He’s interested in the level of detailing involved here, since he’s hardly going to get her out of his head at this point—he stoops by the end of the cabinet bank, then hums again as he finds a bare patch where he remembers Cora scraping out a long rut when she was learning to walk. That puts one end on the memory range.

“You’ve met my son. Is he well?” Its voice isn’t an exact match.

“I really can’t speak for casual acquaintances,” Peter says. Thinking about where else Talia’s children had mauled the kitchen, and under that, what he remembers of Stiles’ mother. The voice isn’t that far off—it’s not an issue of failed impersonation so much as—as timing. As evolution.

It sounds older than he remembers, the timbre slightly lowered, certain sounds rasped with age. And she looks older, not the young mother who’d handed him an ordered list of toys Stiles liked along with the emergency contacts. “I know, but I have to ask,” it says. “I worry about him, and I barely get to see him.”

“Well, that must be difficult, what with all of the killing. He seems to object to that. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t come over?” Peter says, as he moves on and lays his hand on the door to the hall.

It’s shut, and when he twists the knob, the handle rotates in a complete circle in his hand. A cold prickle crawls up his spine and fans out over his shoulders. He swallows against it, rolls his shoulders as casually as he can, but the fear just drops down into his gut where it nestles, a tiny but persistent chip of ice.

“It had to be done. I want him to understand—I want _you_ to, so you can tell him,” she says. It says, stern jumping into a strained, pleading tone that makes Peter look up. “You need to tell him. This is for him—him and John, so we can come home together.”

“Here? Home _here_?” Peter can’t help saying. He knows he’s better off not responding, even as a distraction tactic, but—she unnerves him. Because she’s not a mere imitation of his memory, because he can’t just pick holes in the mimicry. She looks and acts as if she’s had an independent life since his memory of her ended, and in this fossilized piece of _his_ history, she seems disturbingly present behind the mask of Stiles’ mother’s face—

And then it’s no longer his, the room. It’s still the _kitchen_ , but the walls are charred and splintering, the floor is cracked. Everything is gutted and burnt and only they remain. And she steps towards him, her fingers dragging through the cinders coating the counter, a living flush in her face, _real_ anger in her eyes. “I’d make it mine if I could,” she says, voice still low but hard now, hard as steel. “I want it to be mine. I need it to be mine. I need my family, I’m doing this for them, I need them back and it’s only _your_ family that’s in the way and I can’t—I’ve waited too long. I worked too hard. I _made_ this, you don’t know how hard I fought and I made it mine and _I_ —I—I—”

Her eyes are wrong. They’re not human. Peter can’t describe it. He doesn’t even think it’s what he’s seeing, so much as what he feels: a wrenching, roiling, visceral need to be out of their line of sight. Just the most basic instinct to flee from something that will kill him.

So when she lunges, he’s already halfway to throwing himself against the hallway door.

Much to his surprise, he crashes through it.

Peter falls down on his hands and one knee. He swings himself to the side, but before he can get up, someone seizes his arm. “Come on!” Stiles shouts and Peter goes with him.

A second later he thinks—but the world is collapsing in on itself anyway. He doubles over, then bundles his arms over his head, trying to protect himself, if there is such a thing in this place. The grip on his arm persists. If anything, it tightens, and then, suddenly, Peter is gasping amid a cacophony of smells. Not only the whiff of blood he’d gotten when Stiles had grabbed him, but the full odoriferous orchestra.

This is real.

This is real, and Stiles’ kitchen, and his niece is shouting at him. “What?” Peter snarls, batting her—she’s got him by the forearm. He pulls away, then knocks against a cabinet. “Laura—”

“Fine, just hold this and keep this on,” Laura snaps, shoving something into his arms. Not his hands, his arms.

Peter looks down and finds himself cradling a phone. It’s squawking, something about losing the window. The tone is vaguely familiar, but before he can place it, he feels something tighten around his wrist: red yarn. Laura’s yanking the other end over to Stiles and as Peter sluggishly pushes himself off the cabinets, she loops the yarn around Stiles’ wrist, drops Stiles’ arm and then brings her other hand down in a stabbing motion against Stiles’ shoulder.

“Hey!” Stiles yelps, sitting bolt upright, just in time to make Peter stop mid-swipe at Laura. He stares at her, then at Peter, so wide-eyed that Peter is shocked his eyes remain in his skull. Then his fingers spasm and his eyes start to roll back.

 _“Slap him,”_ barks the phone in Peter’s arms. _“If he goes to sleep and dreams up a portal to hell, it’s completely on your heads.”_

Lydia. Peter recognizes the tone in the middle of grabbing Stiles by one shoulder, which both keeps the man from falling into the fridge and pushes Laura temporarily out of the way. Of course, Laura being Laura, she immediately forces herself back in, diving for the phone as it drops out of the crook of Peter’s elbow. “What?” Laura barks at it.

At the same time, something else clatters to the floor. Laura curses and scoops it up, and Peter just glimpses a syringe before Stiles’ flailing arm gets in the way. “Don’t, Jesus, I’m up, I’m up,” Stiles says. He even starts to twist away from Peter, before abruptly wilting with his head hanging, panting heavily. “I—I mean—okay, not—but when have I _ever_ —and shit! Dad! Dad and your—”

“Jordan and my brother and whoever they could get drove into the preserve to get them,” Laura says. She finally stops crowding them and scoots back, looking at the phone. “I think they’re—oh, shit, I hung up on her.”

“Lydia?” Stiles mutters. He makes a second attempt to move, then slumps into Peter’s shoulder. Sweat is beading along his hairline and he looks even paler than before, and…he frowns and lifts his hand, looking at several spots of blood on the back of it, just as Peter realizes what he’s smelling.

Peter pushes Stiles back against the cabinets, then stills. “The needle broke off,” he says, watching the silver tattooing ebb and flow along the column of Stiles’ neck. He’s careful not to look Stiles in the eye. “We should take it out.”

“Oh. What? Oh, yeah, sure,” Stiles says. He doesn’t sound particularly steady, but the hand he has on Peter’s arm is gripping, not pushing away. “Yeah. Bleeding is bad. Dad hates that.”

“What did she tell you to do?” Peter says under his breath. He ducks down so he’s level with Stiles’ shoulder, spots the glinting end of the needle—at least it broke off above the skin—and pinches it between his fingers. Sniffs, decides the blood beading out of the end doesn’t smell arterial, and then yanks.

Immediately afterward, he uses his other hand to wad up Stiles’ shirt over the spot. Stiles jerks a little against him, then moves sideways. Then further sideways, so that Peter’s forced to jam his knee into Stiles’ front to keep the man still.

He is not, as Peter initially thinks, fainting again. He is trying to squirm away to see the phone that Laura is texting furiously on. “It’s Nine Herbs plus some other stuff, Jordan said call her and she said it’s the only way to break him out of a fit when his dad’s not around,” Laura says, glancing up. She doesn’t stop texting, but at least she knows to answer Peter immediately. “Um, she also said it usually knocks him out. It—the idea is put him under enough that he can’t dream?”

“Yeah, because illusions and REM sleep aren’t that far apart, but it’s kind of different when she’s going after _Dad_ ,” Stiles snaps.

They clearly aren’t talking about the same ‘she.’ Laura draws her shoulders up in a bracing posture and then looks at Peter. Then startles, jerking the phone against her chest, as Stiles tries to grab it and fails. Peter had relaxed his hold on the man, trying to figure out what his niece honestly expected him to do with this mess, and he curses that now, pulling Stiles back. From the smell of things, Stiles’ bleeding hasn’t completely stopped and…

“Is he out now?” Laura says nervously.

Peter bites back another curse and hurriedly pushes Stiles up against the cabinet again. He keeps his thumb over the spot on Stiles’ shoulder and—hearing Laura suck her breath in alarm—puts his hand over Stiles’ eyes as he listens to the man’s heartbeat.

The phone rings. Laura answers it in an annoyed tone, then makes a cringing noise low in her throat as Lydia says she will be over in ten minutes and Jordan will be over in thirty, so Stiles had better be in the house or else. Then Lydia hangs up.

“You know, it’s not like we’re _trying_ to piss them off,” Laura says.

Actually, in her case…and then Peter decides not to, with Stiles’ blood smeared against his thumb and fingertips, and the memory of Stiles’ mother’s face with those eyes still jangling his nerves. She might not be accurate, but on the whole, Laura isn’t _wrong_.

“I’m…I’m gonna find a first-aid kit,” Laura says after a moment. “And…um, are you—you want a water, or something? You smell…not bleeding, but also not…exactly great.”

“I’m not,” Peter says. He slowly lifts the pressure on Stiles’ shoulder, and when no fresh-blood scent emerges, he shifts back so he’s not leaning so uncomfortably on his knees. “A water would be good—thank you.”

“Yeah, well…” But then Laura swallows whatever sharp comment she’d been about to make—and it would have been sharp, from how her scent spiked with worry and fear. She pauses another moment, then pads off.

Peter listens to her move around the kitchen. The kitchen. He looks around, reminding himself it wasn’t real, and then…well, damn all of it, regardless of its state of reality. He has a choice now, and he takes it, picking up Stiles and carrying the man into the living room. At the very least, they’ve earned a change of scene.

* * *

Lydia arrives when promised, and spends the time between that and the arrival of the others ordering Laura around. Peter she mostly leaves alone, after giving him a stare a basilisk would admire and informing him that, due to the anchoring spell used, he’d have to stay roped to Stiles via the red yarn for a few hours. She hadn’t been particularly impressed by his question as to whether that required them to also forgo basic amenities like a soft bed, but had merely pointed out that the couch folded out. Which Peter had immediately deployed.

He’d used up the last of his adrenaline doing that—used up all of his energy period, including any reserves—so when Laura comes in and stands over him and stares down with a harried expression, he finds it annoying just because he feels too tired to even turn his head away.

“Derek’s got Mom,” Laura says. “He says she passed out for a bit, but she’s awake again and wants to talk.”

She is not holding a phone. Granted, Peter can’t see either of her hands because they’re behind the couch, and hoping for the best is generally not a good idea with Talia’s children, but he keeps his mouth shut anyway. A few seconds’ delay is better than nothing.

“I told her I’d see if you were okay to talk and then I’d call her back. Which I can not do, but then you’re going to have to explain why you’re awake when she does get here,” Laura adds.

“I’m not entirely clear, here,” Peter says. “Is this supposed to be blackmail or self-immolation?”

Laura starts to answer him, stops to push at her hair instead, and then throws up her other arm and spins in a partial circle, making an aggravated noise. She moves a little off to the side, then twists back around. “Okay, look, I am sorry. I did not think our old house would have an actual portal to hell in it, and I am sorry everybody ended up here, and you and Mom were so right about this town. So how are we getting out of here?”

It’s on the tip of Peter’s tongue to remind Laura she could have figured that out for herself several hours ago, by going to the airport when Talia had wanted her to. But that’s not remotely on the table at this point, and while prodding at his niece’s ego is often the only babysitting compensation Peter ever gets, he’s not really eager for that right now. Which means, he’s annoyed to admit, she’s right: they should figure that out.

“Did you call your sister?” he mutters, pushing himself up against the back of the couch. The yarn around his wrist pulls taut and he puts his arm down, then follows it to where there’s a wad stuffed under Stiles’ arm.

Peter tugs it out and Stiles’ arm and head rock slightly, then flop back into place. Stiles is disturbingly limp and the steadiness of his heartbeat is not nearly as reassuring as it should be, but obviously, Peter isn’t going to lift an eyelid and check Stiles’ pupil reflexes again. He shakes the yarn loose, suppressing a grimace, and then startles when Stiles abruptly twitches over onto his side, forehead bouncing gently off Peter’s knuckles.

“…sure she understood exactly how important this was, I was still trying to get that through her skull when I heard you two in the kitchen,” Laura is saying. She comes around to the end of the foldout bed and sits down, fiddling with the phone Stiles gave them. “She sent a text saying she’s going up to look, but hasn’t answered in fifteen minutes. I can call her again—”

“Well, I don’t think we want her so panicked that she flies out here,” Peter says.

Laura jerks her head up to glare at him. “You told me to call her.”

“I told you to do that, I didn’t tell you to—” Then Peter exhales the rest of what he’d been about to say. Makes himself look away from his niece, at the ceiling, and counts to five and reminds himself that really, Talia should be the one putting in any effort to improve them. She made the idiots, after all. “Laura. So Cora knows what she’s supposed to find, and that it’s me and your mother who wants it, correct? Then—”

“I really, really didn’t think this was going to happen,” Laura abruptly blurts out, while her scent goes from prickly anger to regret-softened fear in an instant. When he looks at her again, her head is down and her shoulders are pulled forward over her lap, so that her forearms hide the phone in her hands. “I know you always told us this place was bad and just to leave it, okay? Just—I just want you to know, this wasn’t some stupid thrill-junkie trip, and it wasn’t just about doing what you said not to either.”

“Really,” Peter mutters, but he’s not nearly as sarcastic as he usually would be. Partly because he’s tired, but partly because also, he knows she had no idea. What’s happened so far is beyond anything even he could imagine.

“Yeah, really.” Laura hunches over for a little longer, then lifts one hand and tucks some hair behind her ear. She frowns down at her lap before tossing the phone aside, a small exasperated noise slipping from her. “Okay. So maybe some of it was about that stuff, but not all—seriously, Peter. It wasn’t just all that. It…it was just, you know, you and Mom never get the way you do about this place about anything else. And when I ran into this omega talking about it—”

“What did they say to you?” Peter asks. In spite of his better judgment, he is curious. This is the first time they’ve had a chance to sit and compare notes.

“That Hell had taken over our house. And—and this is the part that got me, Peter—that maybe that’s why we’re who we are, that we’d known it all along and that’s why we got strong,” Laura says. She glances at him, then drops her eyes to the phone. “I got kind of mad, actually. Because that’s a bunch of bullshit, obviously, but…you and Mom always…never wanted to talk about it and…”

Peter snorts. “And you thought it’s because that wasn’t _that_ far off? Because maybe our family has been involved in some terrible things? Seeing as we do have a record that way?”

Laura lifts her head a little. Gives him a wary glance, then straightens a little more. “Okay, well, Derek and Cora are the ones who never listened during family history time. You know that. You know—I just wanted to know, so if people started coming after us for it, I’d know whether it really was our fault.”

“Yes,” Peter says after a moment. “Yes, you did listen.”

They look at each other for a while. She hasn’t fully relaxed, and she’s finally showing some smarts that way; he’s hardly going to let her lack of forethought go, even if he understands her motivations better. And he does. After all, buried secrets coming back to bite them aren’t limited to just one generation in their family, and he and Talia have had to do their own digging to deal with their parents’ sins. He can understand why Laura might think she was being proactive, was even protecting the rest of them. He would have gone about it much differently, but would he have gone about it at all?

He would have, Peter admits. His family is his pack is his blood. He needs to know where they stand, how they stand, _why_ they stand—and never _if_. It’ll never be if they stand, not if he can help it.

“I’m sorry,” Laura says again. She brushes at her hair again and he realizes it’s not really her hair that’s bothering her, it’s that mark on her neck. She notices him noticing and winces. “It’s been kind of tingling since you and Stiles—it got cold, and you know, it’s like I could tell you were coming out of it, or going deeper, and…this is just really fucked-up, Peter.”

Well, he can’t disagree with that either. Although he does briefly resent the fact that she’s reminded him of his own mark, which he’s been trying to ignore. “When will your mother be here?”

“Maybe another thirty?” Laura says, after picking up the phone and checking it. “Jordan says they ended up stopping by the hospital—they needed to get some stuff for Stiles’ dad.”

Stiles’ heartbeat fillips suddenly. “Oh?” Peter says.

“Yeah, I think to help him recover from whatever he had to do out in the woods…Jordan didn’t say what, exactly—Lydia called him and he started talking to her instead. She’s upstairs doing something—told me to go make sandwiches if all I was going to do is breathe over her shoulder,” Laura says, making a face. She tosses the phone in one hand, glancing up past Peter to the staircase in the hall, and her grimace turns far more insecure. “Then again, that’s about all we’ve been good for so far, isn’t it? This place has us running around like idiots.”

“Had us,” Peter says pointedly. He rumbles in his throat till she looks at him, and then holds her gaze. “You did actually listen, but most of the time I didn’t think you picked up any more of the details than your siblings did.”

Laura’s spine snaps straight and she glares at him. “You’re such an asshole, Peter,” she says, getting up. But then, to her credit, she only takes one annoyed step away before turning back. “Sandwiches?”

“Well, if you find a steak in there, I wouldn’t mind that instead,” Peter says mildly. 

“Oh, my God. I know I screwed up but—just what’s the point of me even being an alpha, it’s not like anybody ever asks me to use it,” Laura says after a second. She flips her hair at him, then walks towards the kitchen. “Fine, steak, whatever. I’ll see what I can find in between bugging Cora.”

No common sense whatsoever, and Peter really should give up on hoping that will change. But he does like her better when she’s storming around, he thinks. That’s how a Hale should look like, and not small and nervous and boxing themselves into an invisible corner.

“I really thought my dad and I had it locked for dysfunctional, but you guys do shades of passive-aggressive I didn’t even think human eyes could see. It’s like infrared to visible light,” Stiles says, from where he’s lying, facing Peter.

“Oh, I wouldn’t credit my niece with that much. She’s hardly catching me at my best,” Peter says.

The idea of making it an accusation doesn’t even enter Peter’s mind until after Stiles flinches. “Sorry,” Stiles mumbles, his voice shrinking to nearly inaudible, even to werewolf ears. “I—didn’t—you shouldn’t have—”

“Well, of course you didn’t mean to act as a medium between me and the demon you’ve been pursuing for _fourteen_ ye—”

“Would you stop being so—so nice about this?” Stiles says, and his voice has recovered and then some. He jerks up on his elbow and in addition to tracking the sudden jump in the two other heartbeats in the house, Peter can’t help tensing. Stiles notices, flinches again, and then drops back down, scooting himself a couple inches away in the process. “Sorry, I—oh, my God, just—all I can say is _sorry_ and it’s stupid and not enough and I just…why _are_ you being nice? I mean, you aren’t, you literally cheated me out of ten minutes of playtime and made me go to bed early because you wanted to get onto snooping in Dad’s desk.”

“Why do you remember all of this?” is what comes out of Peter’s mouth.

It’s really not what they should be discussing, and Peter is generally better at staying focused than this, but—but really, at this point Peter needs to acknowledge that everything in this town bends the rules of normal. And for some reason, what bends them the most is the man on the other side of the foldout bed, staring at him with a mixture of amusement, jangling nerves, and honest confusion.

“Seriously?” Stiles says after a moment. “You’re asking me that, seriously? You babysat me on the night this all started.”

“Well, exactly, I’d think if I were going to have perfect recall, it’d be of the details that are relevant now. You can’t honestly tell me that what I did with you has anything to do with now,” Peter points out. “My family history, fine, but what I personally did—”

Stiles grimaces again. Then rolls over onto his back, his arms and legs sprawling out. They’d pulled one arm out of his shirt to disinfect and bandage the injection site, then put the shirt back on, but the collar is still stretched out and flops low to show a faint set of scars over one side of Stiles’ chest. They look like claw marks and Peter has to bite back against a surprisingly hard—hard sense of anger, seeing them.

“Yeah, no, I know, you’re right, I’m just…I’m just weird, I don’t know.” Stiles stares at the ceiling for a few seconds, then moves one hand in a limp circle. “I mean, I do know, obviously, demon stuff has fucked me up. And look, in the beginning it was kind of, let’s go over every detail just in case, but we did figure out early on that it wasn’t anything to do with you and…I guess it just was harmless? Remembering that part? Since it’s not like we ever thought you’d show up again. I know it’s sad, okay, but…it didn’t really hurt anything, right?”

Peter opens his mouth to answer, then closes it, and it’s not because he thinks he should change his initial response. It’s…that he really should be sensible. He is sensible. He knows what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense, and his entire life, he’s never bothered wasting time and resources on what doesn’t make sense.

“No,” he finally says. It’s what he wanted to say in the first place, but it didn’t make sense, and it still doesn’t. He doesn’t—he doesn’t _care_ what happens to this place, or the people here.

Stiles glances at him, disbelieving. Then snorts humorlessly. “Thanks.” He turns his head back. “Okay. Look. You’re a werewolf, obviously, super-senses and all that and a lot of the stuff in the last twenty-four hours is also about the fact that you’re—”

“Armed?” Peter says, because sarcasm feels superficially safer. Even though it’s really just a tool, not a foundation, and he is being utterly irrational right now.

“Shut up,” Stiles mutters. He puts his arm over his face, then immediately takes it off again. He’s blushing and he keeps wrinkling his face as if that will move the blood out of his cheeks. “Fine, yeah, you’re—really way better-looking than four-year-old me remembered, but four-year-old me was—wow, I hope I didn’t have actual beauty standards at that age, that’d be really fucked-up. Even by present standards.”

What would be rational, Peter thinks, is getting up and going to the kitchen and helping Laura. Not with the sandwiches, but with the research he wants Cora to do. They have an actual problem, which involves investigating their family, and Peter can do that perfectly well without continuing this conversation.

“Look, what happened—whatever she said to you—it’s not you,” Stiles says suddenly. He looks over at Peter, frowns, and then pushes himself up onto his elbow again. The effort leaves him short of breath, contrasting sharply with the fervor in his eyes. “It’s not about you. I just—if you’re gonna be nice, I just want to make sure I get that in. It’s not your family, or whatever the hell they built into the house that she wants back, it’s just my—it’s my mom, not your family, okay? Her and her fucked-up ideas.”

And then, just as suddenly as he’d started, Stiles slumps against the couch. He goes so limp that his face almost entirely sinks into the cushion, and if he hadn’t shifted a moment later, Peter would have reached out to ensure Stiles didn’t suffocate himself.

“Your mom,” Peter repeats.

He’s not thinking when he does, only just trying to fill the air, which is singing with tension, and that had been the word that Stiles’ voice had twisted savagely on. Stiles’ shoulders hitch roughly, and then he shoves his fist against the couch back. Pushes his head back up. “Yeah, it—we call it a demon, but it hasn’t been that in years. It’s my mom. It’s her, and Dad doesn’t want—he thinks if we admit it, we’re making her stronger but I just don’t get that. It’s her and we can’t do anything about it anyway. We should just say it. Because it’s not—it’s not _our_ fault either, for God’s sake.”

This isn’t Peter’s argument. Peter can hear the old wounds behind every word, hear them as clearly as the way Stiles doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying. They’re not his wounds, but the burn and ache of them make it through and he can’t sit at ease in the middle of that. He can’t make himself get up either.

“She did get taken. I wasn’t lying, by the way, they really did try to exorcise the demon. She really was trying to do that and just that,” Stiles goes on after a couple seconds. His voice is less strained, but only because its bitterness has rounded it out. “She was really stubborn, she wouldn’t have given up—everybody says I get that from her. So I guess…they fought it out in there, her and the demon, and she won. But she wasn’t coming back human. You know what they say about staring into the abyss, and it staring back?”

“She’s still a demon. She can’t have changed it that much,” Peter says suddenly. The way Stiles had been more than dismissive of Allison Argent, he’s remembering. No, not just remembering—the memory jams into his head like an icepick, and he almost reaches up to press his hand against his temple to push back on it. This all means things to him, and he can’t stop that, why can’t he _stop that_. “And if she’s a demon, then there are ways to get rid of her that have nothing to do with that.”

Stiles looks oddly at him. “Okay, so…what, you’re going to tell me we’re just going to kill my mom and that solves everything?”

“Well, _yes_ ,” Peter snaps.

“What…” Then Stiles closes his mouth and just continues staring at Peter, as if nothing about this makes sense. 

Which is more right than he knows, and Peter—Peter should do something before Stiles does realize. It isn’t as if Stiles won’t, he’s intelligent enough, and he can’t possibly be too drained from demon-fighting and sleep-deprivation all the time. Peter needs to do something.

“Hey, food,” Laura calls from the kitchen.

Stiles blinks, then twists his head to peer over the couch. Then moves back and pushes himself to a sitting position as Peter climbs over the top of the couch, unraveling the yarn linking them together as he goes. Unraveling it and praying that it will reach across the handful of yards he needs.

Thankfully, it does. And Stiles doesn’t call after him either, though Peter can sense the puzzled stare on his back. Peter ignores it, and also ignores the way that Laura eyes him as he pointedly does not shut the door behind him. He could do that and the yarn would still allow him to stand just within the kitchen, but he has his pride.

Actually, he doesn’t and he knows it, and so does his niece. Who is suspiciously quiet as she simply hands him a plate of food. She stands in front of him, shifting a little on her feet, with another plate slightly extended towards him. He raises his brows and Laura sighs, then coughs roughly as if that’s meant to cover that. Then she goes out into the other room, and he can hear her giving Stiles the food. He’s almost more annoyed for resorting to that than he is at the nonsense going on in his head right now.

So honestly, it is a relief when his sister finally arrives with Derek and Stiles’ father. Good God, but Laura is right: they’re utterly useless, all of them. Including Peter.

* * *

Reuniting with his family preoccupies Peter for the better part of an hour, particularly since Talia and Derek both look as if they’ve been attacked by vampires and then force-fed wolfsbane to keep them from healing. Derek preemptively grumbles off his sister’s loud questions about his health, then does Peter the favor of keeping her busy with hauling him and an equally drained-looking Scott upstairs for a shower. The Argent girl goes with them, taking Scott’s other arm, and doesn’t come back down when Laura does.

Laura doesn’t explain that, and instead trails after Parrish and a woman that Talia explains is Marin Morrell, Deaton’s sister, who are discussing something with Lydia—something about Kali, who’s not answering calls. Which makes more sense when there’s a pair of muffled thumps, a disgusted noise, and then the three women emerge with Parrish’s unconscious body slung between them. This apparently happens often enough that when they pass the living room, Stiles’ father calls out to use the air mattress in his office. And then he goes back to the argument he’s having with Stiles, which keeps bouncing between tired, regretful, and defensive, on both sides.

“Peter,” Talia says, sitting him down at the kitchen table.

“Yes?” he says, pushing her sandwich towards her.

She ignores it and keeps looking at him. He tries to ignore her, but she has that annoying way of looking at him as if she’s merely counting the seconds, and he ends up dropping his gaze. Which is when he realizes that Lydia had just cut the yarn between him and Stiles, and hadn’t actually unknotted it from his wrist. He pulls it half over his hand, then stops. Looks back at his waiting sister.

“You’re supposed to be explaining to me why you ran off with the sheriff to the _one_ place in town everyone is supposed to avoid,” Peter says irritably. “After it almost killed your daughter, and, clearly, almost got the better of you.”

Talia props her hands under her chin. “Well, I thought John was going to trade himself to the demon so Stiles could get away, and that seemed like an objectively terrible idea if the goal is to get rid of the demon. Also, I’m an alpha, and alphas always think they’re stronger than they really are and do stupid things because of that.”

Peter has to stop himself from taking back her sandwich, because one, he will not sink to her level, and two, he’s not hungry now, and three, damn her. “Stop telling me I’m right whenever you want to annoy me.”

“Well, tell me what happened when I was gone,” Talia says. And then, before he can just wrap his irritation around himself and let her staring try and get through it, she reaches over and bumps the back of her hand against his jaw, gently. “Jesus, Peter, I thought—I really didn’t know how we were going to get you, for a moment there.”

She is…she is sincere about that, even though she knows exactly what she’s doing. He hates her and admires it at the same time. And then she puts her hand down and curls her fingers around the sandwich, and she’s trembling so much that her nails chitter against the plate. He presses his lips together, then rubs his hands over his face and tells her. Getting the call from not-her at the diner, driving away, seeing Gerard Argent’s body in the woods. The blind panic that’d come over him—the demon looking like their mother. Getting thrown around the trees and then waking up to Stiles dragging him to Lydia’s guest house. All of the bits and pieces of theories so far—at that point Talia adds a few things John had told her, but she’s obviously holding back more.

But it’s also clear she’s just waiting for him to finish, and so he tries to do that as succinctly as he can, walking her through the drive over here and then the fit Stiles had gone into, and how he’d ended up being dragged into the demon’s illusion as a result. She puts her hand on his shoulder again, then takes it off a moment before he would have shrugged.

“That thing in our house really goes for it,” Talia says grimly. She’s worked through most of her sandwich and puts what’s left down so that she can press the bridge of her nose against her hand. “It put _you_ in front of me, when I was with John. And then you turned into an alpha.”

Peter considers that, and then her. “Well?”

“Well, obviously, I clawed you in the face before you’d finished shifting,” Talia says, picking up her sandwich again. Her eyes are less amused than her wry tone. “You were so busy blaming me that I had time to do that.”

“I actually sound fairly on-point,” Peter says, and then makes a face when she chokes on the sandwich. “Oh, as if you wouldn’t complain if it showed me you and didn’t try to suffocate me in a hug.”

Talia drops the sandwich and pushes the plate away, coughing into her fist. She glances at him, dips her head and coughs a last time, and then looks up again. “That’s probably why it hasn’t tried that one, it doesn’t seem to actually want to have to pretend to care,” she observes. Then she tilts her head. “Tell me what happened, Peter.”

 _Nothing_ , Peter almost says, and then he rethinks it. This is his sister, the one person who’s defended him through thick and thin, no matter what he’s done. Not that she’s refused to nag him, of course, but she’s always been very clear that what she thinks of him and what she will do for him are not conditioned on each other, and that’s why he honestly doesn’t care that she killed a fake version of him. If it’s not actually him, it’s meaningless to both of them.

“The demon is Stiles’ mother. It’s not a possession, it’s her actual personality, with the demon’s powers,” Peter says. He pauses to take in her reaction: surprised, but quickly overtaken by comprehension, touched with a sympathy that’s not meant for him. Then he takes a deep breath. “I told Stiles we’ll kill her.”

“Okay,” is all Talia says.

He gives her a good minute, then sits back in his chair. “Talia. I told him that, and I basically told him there should be a way to do it that doesn’t involve him or his father doing the same thing his mother did.”

“Well, given how _that_ turned out, we’d better find a different way,” Talia says.

Sometimes Peter just…cannot understand what his family is. It’s not, he cannot understand them, or cannot understand what’s wrong with them. What he can’t understand is what they are: insane, idiotic, or plain alien.

“You’re supposed to be my alpha,” he finally says. He’s sputtering a little, and it’s embarrassing, and he can’t stop himself long enough to fix it. “You’re my—you’re my _sister_. You’re—I watched him _once_ , fourteen years ago, and the next time I saw him—I’ve spent about a day here and for large chunks of that time, I’ve been unconscious or trapped in a demon’s mind and—you’re supposed to be telling me this! This!”

“What am I supposed to be telling you?” Talia says, frowning. “That he’s still actually a teenager and the age gap will be creepy even before you get to the babysitting backstory, and also twenty-four hours is more like obsession and we don’t actually want to live here and all that? That’s what I should be saying?”

Peter starts to say yes, then shuts his mouth and just glares at her.

“I _am_ your sister, and your alpha. And therefore, I know you.” Talia has the temerity to look bored. “You don’t actually care about any of that, Peter. Not if you offered to kill his mother.”

“I didn’t…actually offer,” Peter mutters.

She even rolls her eyes. “You came close enough that you’ve been twitchy since, and given what’s going on, that’s ridiculous. Peter. We need to kill the damn demon anyway. Stop twitching and help me figure out how to do that and then we can talk about how you’re going to date that boy without losing your mind.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Peter finally says. Then holds his hand up, as a hint of annoyance finally starts to weave into Talia’s scent. “I’m only saying that so it’s absolutely clear and you can’t look back at this later and—”

“Well, I never said it wasn’t a terrible idea, Peter. But you’re right, I’m your alpha and sister, and I love you and will support you through your choices,” Talia says, straight-faced. 

He looks at her for a few seconds. She still manages to keep that heartfelt expression. Which isn’t technically false, of course, but truth and mockery are not mutually exclusive, and it’s even more annoying when he realizes he admires her. God, but she _is_ his sister.

“I hate it when you make me responsible,” he finally says.

“I know.” Talia finally smiles, but even then, it’s still more about warmth than amusement. She reaches over again to pat his shoulder, and he notices that she still has that tremor, although it’s greatly reduced. “Now, this demon. I’m very angry, Peter, and not just because it’s nearly killed you and Laura and had a stab at me, or because it’s using our old house as a base. Or even because actually, once they stop yelling at you, the people here it’s terrorizing are not horrible enough to deserve it. I’m angry because that _bitch_ —”

“I was going to say,” Peter starts.

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten, and her being John’s wife makes sense of a lot of things. But she’s still not a person, she’s a demon, and she’s a demon who’s literally trying to build an empire out of our family,” Talia says. The heat in her voice has receded, but only just, and Peter finds himself checking her for signs of an imminent full-shift. “That bitch needs to find her own signature move, rather than copying our first alpha.”

It probably has to do with how Peter is still accepting the reality of his absurdly-timed personalization of the situation, but he doesn’t immediately follow her. He does sense that he should, and see that she’s a bit puzzled he’s taking so long. Which is annoying, considering every other time he’s been in step with her and just this once, when he’s been half-killed by a demon and reunited with a Stiles who did not have that _mouth_ on him, if they’re going to talk about unexpected and yes, honestly, attractive growth developments, and—he stiffens. “Wait. You’re—you’re saying—”

“Wants her family safe, doesn’t care how it’s done, may actually be getting what she wants if they die first,” Talia rattles off. “I finally remembered, and it makes sense, so now we—”

“The bodies,” Peter says sharply. “Where did they bury the bodies?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm aware that in certain Eastern cultures, invisible red string supposedly links people whose paths are fated to cross. I'm pretty sure Peter and Stiles are aware too, it's just Stiles is trying to be tactful to the hot werewolf who is strangely not pissed at him and his demon-ridden town, while Peter's having a little bit of a priority crisis (can't really call it a moral crisis with him).
> 
> Can I just say, I think this might be my favorite rendition of the Peter and Talia relationship so far? And him staying so long with her makes way more sense if she's got an awry moral compass too and they have mutual enabler dependency issues, and also, she's _better_ than him at the emotional manipulation. Like we think Peter is a schemer but he's clearly much younger than Talia and she was totally the one who schooled him in it.
> 
> Also, good God, fifteen chapters and we finally got all of the Hales together.


	16. Chapter 16

Getting Derek’s mother and Stiles’ father out of the preserve is slightly less complicated than Derek had been thinking, considering everything to date. Marin met them at the preserve gate, and then they wove this giant dreamcatcher-looking thing out of red yarn and carried it into the woods till Marin told them to drop it. And then they got attacked by pretty much everything that has ever terrified Derek: rogue alphas, hunters, government agents with alien weaponry. Things got…kind of blurry.

Well, he’d tripped over something, which had turned out to be Laura’s severed head, and before he could really _take that in_ , Scott had kicked him in the head—not on purpose, the guy was leaping at one of the Men in Black—and smashed his face the rest of the way into the ground. The whole shock of it had kind of distracted him from the severed-head thing, so when he’d ended up with just bloody dirt up his nose instead of dead sister, he’d—he’d—okay, it had gotten him over the illusions. He knows that’s a good thing, and he knows that if somebody really made him, he’d choose breaking the illusion over continuing to have to fight in it. But it’s just he literally did nothing besides some macramé bullshit and carrying his mom to the car.

“It’s not really that big of a deal,” Laura tells him. “Look, everybody knows you’re a good fighter, it’s just this fucking town. I mean, all of us have gotten flattened here. Even Mom.”

Derek grunts, because otherwise Laura’s going to keep talking till he does, and finishes off the wrap she’d brought up for him. Then wipes at some water running down his neck; he probably should’ve dried his hair more, but he’d wanted to get out of the bathroom before Scott, who had _insisted_ Derek go first since he was going to be busy not-passing-out against the sink counter, actually fainted. He’s still keeping an ear on the shower, just in case the guy does a nosedive in there.

“And I’m sure everybody supernatural who’s watched the X-Files has had that nightmare at some point,” Laura goes on. “That black oil stuff was pretty gross.”

“Are you up here for something?” Derek asks her, instead of explaining it wasn’t X-Files and his sister is so unbelievably behind on pop culture for somebody who, well, runs off to places like Beacon Hills. Because honestly, pride aside, he’s good on fighting for right now.

Laura starts to answer him, then stops and crosses her arms over her chest. She looks down at him, then rolls her eyes and uncrosses one arm to pull out a phone and check something. “Seriously, what is this,” she mutters under her breath. “Can’t smack you because you look like crap, can’t smack Cora because I actually _need_ her to _pay attention_ , like the attic is honestly that fucking hard to find something in…”

Derek rolls his eyes and leans back, then catches himself before he goes completely horizontal, because he can feel how hard that wave of fatigue is trying to surge in him, and he is absolutely not going to sleep right now. Again, he barely even did anything. Allison and Scott and Jordan did all of the fighting, and even Morrell was over by the trapdoors chanting, so why Derek feels like somebody’s repeatedly hit him with a truck—he rubs at his face. “I’m fine. You should go help Mom and Peter with whatever they’re doing about this thing.”

“Well, that’s why I keep calling Cora, because Peter needs her to find some stuff our old Emissary left,” Laura says, recrossing her arms and looking at the door, in the direction of the stairs. She sounds annoyed. “We can get _one_ goddamn box out of storage, for God’s sake. We can’t be that lame.”

The shower stops. Derek starts to get off the bed, but pauses when Laura’s head swivels around and she frowns at him. Then he stands up anyway, because she seriously is not in a position to order him around right now, but by then, he can hear Scott and Allison talking in the hall. Scott’s telling Allison sorry, he thought she’d gone to the downstairs one and she’s saying just go to bed and she’ll get herself a fresh towel, and Laura is starting to get that look on her face, the one where she thinks faking that she’s not amused is being a supportive sister.

“Shut up,” Derek says. “You ate Parrish’s granola?”

Laura flushes, then hits Derek in the shoulder. Then immediately grabs him, paling, as he sways a little. Not that much, she just caught him off-guard and—she just tightens her grip when he tries to shrug her off, so he sighs and gets ready to wait it out.

“You should be okay,” she says after a moment. “If you get in some sleep. It’s not like I think anybody’s going out again—”

“Yeah, I think we all kind of figured that one out,” Derek mutters. She is annoying, but…he does want to sit down. “Fine. Okay. I’ll take a nap.”

She doesn’t let go of him till he actually starts to sit down, and even then, her fingers tug like maybe she’s going down with him. He makes a face at her and she finally pulls off her hand, but then keeps looking down at him. She’s not going to mock him anymore and Derek looks away, wondering why nothing ever gets _less_ awkward.

“I should’ve told you some stuff. I mean, why I said, you know, go ahead with her,” Laura says. Her feet shift against the carpet. “I wasn’t trying to put you in—in anything—”

“Well, it’s not like you were going to kill me if I didn’t,” Derek mutters.

“I know, but I still—you’re my brother, and just because I want to figure this out and figure out how to make it _stop_ —”

Derek just barely bites back an aggravated noise, because honestly, that’s not really how he feels. And with how nervous Laura smells and how they only just got back their mother, he—he kind of isn’t in the mood to fight with his family either. “You and Peter were here the whole time, right? Hasn’t he yelled at you yet?”

“Not really. Not like he’s really trying to. He’s been kind of weird, actually—not like possessed, or anything like that, but just…weird,” Laura says. The bitter tinge to her scent goes down and for a second he thinks he may have successfully distracted her, but then she takes a step towards him, so he has to look up or else have his head hit her stomach. “Derek. Look. I’m just trying to admit I’ve pulled some really stupid moves lately.”

“Well, I already knew that,” Derek says. Then pushes down on his usual urge to ignore her till she finds somewhere else to be annoyed, and makes himself keep looking at her. “Laura, yeah, but…I’m fine, okay? And Mom’s fine. Mom didn’t even…she woke up in the car, and she didn’t even ask me why I was there. Not even when I said we were coming here where you and Peter were.”

His sister presses her lips together and hikes her crossed arms higher against her chest, looking defensive anyway. She is so frustrating that way, even more than when she goes off and just does things without telling anybody, not letting anybody tell her anything. Even when it’s not about behaving like a good alpha and being responsible, she just does this clamming-up thing, and it drives everybody up the wall.

But Derek starts to say so anyway, even though she’s not listening, because it’s annoying and because she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t care. She just keeps not thinking before she shifts, but she cares. So he keeps trying to talk her out of it, even if he’s pretty much the worst person in their family for doing that sort of thing.

“No, I know. Don’t—I know, I just…this is just so fucking _insane_ , all of it, and…” Laura says, her shoulders suddenly unlocking. She rubs at her face again, mumbling a little into her hand, and then gives Derek a tired smile. “Oh, my God, when we get home. We are so getting it, aren’t we?”

“Well, you are. You said you were going to handle it for me,” Derek points out.

And just like that, his sister smells irritated again. Maybe they’re both getting better at this. “Sure, fine, going off with Allison,” Laura mutters. “Never said anything about the other one. Did you?”

“Go yell at Cora,” Derek says, shoving at her knees. When she snorts and takes a step back, he pulls his legs up onto the bed and glares at her. “And maybe if you’re so worried, you should check whether Jordan needs an energy bar. He looked pretty rough.”

Laura opens her mouth, then closes it. She unfolds one arm and raises her hand, but then just turns, with a little dismissive finger-wiggle, and walks out the door. Which feels like victory, for the bare second between her leaving and Scott stumbling into the room.

“Oh, okay,” Scott says, blinking at Derek. Then he turns around like he’s going to leave.

“It’s a double bed,” Derek says without thinking, and then he wants to claw himself in the face. When they put the demon down, he also hopes that that will take care of whatever in this place is chopping his IQ in half, because seriously. “Scott. Scott, look, I was just—”

Scott turns back around, but he doesn’t look that thrilled about Derek trying to get up. “Your sister’s right, you should get some sleep,” he says.

Shit, he overheard. And then Derek stomps on his panic and just sits on the bed, because of course Scott did, they’re all werewolves, and Derek is not a sixteen-year-old with his first crush, and also they have other priorities, like the killer demon in the woods. And fine, because if Derek is going down no matter what, he might as well go for it.

“Okay, but I think everybody else is staying over too, so we don’t waste so much time trying to find each other,” he points out. “So it’s this or a couch.”

“I could probably call my dad and go home,” Scott says. Then, somehow, looks as if he’s just trying to put two thoughts together in a very worn-out mind, and not as if he’s standing there with a great view of Derek’s incredibly shrinking IQ. “I don’t actually want to.”

Derek swallows, breathes out, and then manages to shift over on the bed without committing further idiocy. “So just come lie down already.”

“If I’m going to stay, I should go see what we’re planning to do about it,” Scott mutters, but instead, he comes over to the bed. He’s moving slowly, but it’s not entirely because he’s reluctant, and when he finally puts his hands on the bed, it only takes him another second to just collapse onto his arms, sighing into the mattress as his legs dangle unevenly over the edge.

He doesn’t move. Derek watches him for a few seconds, until the silence starts to feel awkward again. But before Derek has to figure out whether offering a blanket or a pillow would be less stupid, Scott twists his head around. Sighs again, then looks over at Derek.

“Your dad,” Derek starts, because picking obvious sore spots is what he’s good at, not friendly conversation starters. “He’s not going to—”

“He will, but I don’t actually care.” Scott’s twisting his mouth even as he says that. He rolls a little more onto his side, bringing most of his legs up onto the bed, then pushes one hand up to scrape at his hair. “That sounds really terrible. I just—I’m really tired of fighting right now.”

“There’s been a lot of it,” Derek says. Then he exhales sharply. Pushes himself up to lean against the headboard, then pulls the pillow out from behind him and nudges it towards Scott. “Catch up on your sleep first. If he wants to talk to somebody, there are people downstairs.”

“Well, if it’s Stiles or his dad, that’s not really going to…” Then Scott stops and lifts his head to look at the pillow. He puts his hand put as if he might actually take it, but then pauses. Looks at Derek. “Is this…this werewolf thing, if it’s—you know I just—I mean, it’s not like I’m going to just watch somebody get killed, it’s not like you have to do things for me—”

Derek rolls his eyes before he can help it. “It’s a pillow, Scott. We’re not aliens and this isn’t some weird alien language.”

“Oh,” Scott says, ducking his head. “Oh, well, thanks.”

And then he takes the pillow and drags it under his head, which is more or less the only reason why Derek doesn’t choke on the foot jammed into his mouth. Because honestly, it really is like he wants Scott to hate him, and he hates it when the voice in his head starts sounding like Laura.

Scott settles down into a loose partial curl to Derek’s left, facing the door, and Derek takes a couple breaths and decides he should just let the guy sleep, and not do this right now when they’re both exhausted. Which is when Scott rolls his head back and looks at Derek again, and says: “I was thinking it was something about trying to apologize for getting into trouble.”

“No, it’s about being—” Derek just manages to change his wording, before the sudden surge of exasperation makes him completely blow it “—being impressed.”

“Oh, really?” Scott says, blinking. “That’s not what anybody else ever did. Sorry, not that I’m saying you’re doing it wrong, because I have no idea, I just—they all usually just told me I was really strong and then tried to kill me so they’d get stronger.”

“That’s…” Actually what typical werewolves would do, and now Derek wants to know who the hell did that, so he can maybe take it to Peter and his mother. When they’re not busy solving this demon problem and honestly, maybe Derek should just go take a couch downstairs. It’d save him a few fails. “No, I meant in a good way. I’m not going to try and kill you—I don’t want to be an alpha, it’s not that big a deal to me. I meant—so far you’ve looked like a great alpha to me.”

Apparently, either Derek can sound like he’s insulting Scott, or he can sound like a brainless fan. His only consolation is that Scott seems to not mind either, from the way he just looks embarrassed. “Thanks, I’m—it’s really just…I’m trying to keep more people from getting killed. It’s all I can do—the magic’s really more Stiles and his dad, so I’m just trying to help get them some time and space to figure it out, and…anyway, okay, so good to know, it’s not about flirting either.”

Derek stiffens. “What?”

Scott opens his mouth, then shakes his head. Then he pushes up himself up on his arms to face Derek. For some reason, he looks and smells as if he’s the one who just crossed a line, and should be sorry about it. “I…smell?” he says, moving his hand vaguely. “I mean, I wasn’t sure if that was just all the fighting, because if it’s one thing I _have_ learned, it’s people have weird reactions to danger, but…we were in the kitchen and anyway, we can pretend this didn’t happen. I’m really sorry, I just—I never get to just _talk_ to other werewolves and you’ve been pretty impressively okay with everything and I really didn’t mean to make this get awkward. Sorry. I got it wrong, sorry.”

“You…didn’t.” Derek wants to look away, or maybe jump out the window. He doesn’t do either, because he is a grown man and also, demon outside. And _also_ , Jesus, if Scott can spend all night dragging Derek’s ass out of danger, Derek can look him in the eye. “It’s—it is kind of about that. Just—with alphas and betas and—but we can not talk about this right now. There’s all the other stuff going on, I know that.”

But now Scott’s frowning, the embarrassment fading into a sharper kind of worry. “Wait, what do you mean, alphas and betas? Like this is—is this something people _have_ to—”

“No! No, we’re not zombies!” Derek snaps. “Do I look like a zombie?”

They look at each other for a second. “No,” Scott says.

“Well, exactly,” Derek says.

They look at each other for a few more seconds. For some reason, the expression on Scott’s face isn’t annoyed or disgusted, or even unimpressed. Scott actually looks confused, and then a little wary. And then he moves the pillow out of the way and pushes himself into a full sitting position.

“You definitely don’t look like your greataunt,” Scott says. Then grimaces, ducking his head to tug at his hair. “Okay. This is why I’m not Stiles.”

“Are you supposed to be?” Derek says, confused himself now. “Because I know he got Peter away from the demon, but basically, I’ve had one conversation with him, and he just yelled a lot about not going to our old house. Which I know _now_ is a bad idea, but I think you all could come up with a better explanation to give to new people.”

“Well, look, we’ve tried a couple different ways, but you’d be surprised how many people _really_ want to go see a real demon. Mentioning it right away doesn’t work either,” Scott says, with an exasperated little shrug. He tugs at his hair some more, then drops his hand to his lap and looks at Derek. “Okay, so trying to give me food isn’t because you have to, and it isn’t because you just feel like you owe me, right?”

“Yeah, exact—” Derek gets out, before Scott kisses him.

Scott had been smelling a lot less angry than Derek had been expecting, but still, Derek had not—had not—there hadn’t been any cues. Not that Derek’s going to push him off, because Derek isn’t _that_ stupid.

Although it doesn’t…it’s good, don’t get Derek wrong, it’s good and hot and hard, but that’s…that’s what doesn’t work. How rough it is, pushing him down the headboard, Scott’s teeth catching at his lower lip when he jams his hand down to slow his slide. Scott pushing him down, palms flat and firm against his shoulders and it makes Derek’s breath stick in his throat, how he’s flexing up against them and there isn’t even a hint of give. 

But it’s not working. It’s—it’s mismatched, that’s what it is, this and the guy who keeps trying to give up stuff so that a random stranger can be more comfortable, and Derek wants to just go with what feels good but he can’t. Because it doesn’t work.

Derek grabs Scott’s forearm and pulls at it. Not that hard. It’s more about getting his balance reoriented and then he’s going to really pull, but before he’s even finished the pull, Scott is pulling back. “Oh, God, _sorry_ ,” Scott says, eyes wide.

Well, it’s not that either, and Derek blows an exasperated breath into Scott’s face before he can help himself. Then grabs the man back, cursing. “Would you—just stop saying sorry to me?” he says. “You’re literally the only person in this town who isn’t getting me into a fight, so—you just—you don’t really seem like you’re here.”

“What?” Scott says. He still stays back, but he doesn’t try to twist out of Derek’s grip. Then he sighs and does move, but again, not trying to get away from Derek. He pushes up closer, then twists around to show Derek something on his ankle: a twist of knotted red thread. “I’m not possessed.”

“No, it’s not that either, it’s—look, obviously, I like you,” Derek says. “I just don’t want to fucking do this because you’re mad at something.”

“I’m not—I’m not mad,” Scott says, frowning. He pushes up against Derek a little, then settles back. He’s a really easy person to read, everything playing over his face: he’s reluctant to think about what Derek’s saying, but can’t not do it, because that wouldn’t be right, so he does. And he doesn’t really like what he comes up with, but of the two people in the room, Derek’s not the one he blames for that. “I’m…no, you’re right. It’s not about being mad but…wow, I’m sorry. And I know that annoys you, but I think you deserve this one. I just…I just am so tired of this. I am so tired. We are fighting so hard, and not getting anywhere, and—you know, sometimes I think I should listen to my dad and we should go? And that’s so terrible. I can’t just—just leave it like this, but I can’t help—I end up thinking that, and it’s terrible. I’m terrible.”

“You’re really not,” Derek says. He moves a little, watching Scott, and when Scott doesn’t tense up, he risks getting back up against the headboard, so they’re closer to level. “Look, you get tired and fed up. You’re human.”

“I know, but—everybody’s tired,” Scott says, almost pleading with him.

“Well, so it’s okay, it’s not like they aren’t having shitty moments too,” Derek says. At the same time, he pushes his hand out and searches around till he finally feels the pillow. He pulls that up and fluffs it into Scott’s ribs. “Look, just go to sleep. Like I said, we don’t have to do this right now. Nobody’s going to leave.”

Scott is going to argue, says the little furrow between his brows. Which just goes to show what a weird alpha he is, that that’d be his first reaction, as if he couldn’t just toss Derek into the wall and walk out of here. And which is probably why Derek makes the effort, and stares back at him till Scott finally closes his mouth with a little helpless noise. Derek doesn’t feel guilty about that at all; if Scott can’t figure out this part of werewolf life, he’s not going to help the guy.

“Nobody’s going to,” Scott finally says.

For a second Derek think he’s just repeating what Derek said, with how the words just droop out of his mouth, but then Derek spots the slight hint of amusement in his eyes. “Nobody’s going. And if they do, I’ll get whatever Jordan shot up my mother with and shoot them with it.”

“You shouldn’t pick fights with your family like that,” Scott says, a little wry, with a lot more meaning behind the words. Then he grimaces, realizing that, and abruptly pushes himself away from Derek. He takes the pillow with him and waves it at Derek for reassurance. “Okay, fine. You win.”

“About time, around here,” Derek mutters, as his own ego issues start to poke in.

By the time he shrugs them off, Scott’s lying down again. The man is a few inches closer and higher up on the bed, his head about level with Derek’s hip, and his arm even nudges Derek’s knee as he tries to get settled. He glances up, mouth half-open, and then sort of exaggerates changing his mind about apologizing. Derek snorts and Scott puts his head down, heartbeat already slowing towards sleep, and that’s when Derek realizes he’s kind of smiling at the other man.

Also, someone is walking towards the room, and deliberately telegraphing it. Derek glances at Scott, but the other man is still busy falling asleep.

Then he looks over. Allison appears in the doorway, wet hair straggling over one shoulder, a bundle of damp laundry under her arm. She looks oddly—Derek doesn’t want to say ‘normal,’ because she still looks like someone who can handle things. She just doesn’t look like somebody who has had to learn how to do that with military-grade weapons.

She hesitates on the threshold, then gestures to Scott, who is now fully asleep. Derek thinks she should be able to see that from where she is, so he doesn’t gesture back, but that makes her frown and gesture again, more forcefully. So he shrugs and waves her over.

“You talked him into not going down and getting into the planning?” Allison says. She pitches her voice low, but not as a whisper, which is just a hair away from a hiss; werewolf hearing and instinct often picks up more on tone than volume.

“He barely made it to the bed,” Derek tells her. Then listens for a second. The Stilinskis obviously have anti-eavesdropping measures all over the house, but those usually don’t block vital signs. “Anyway, I don’t think there’s a lot of planning happening right now. I think everybody’s standing down.”

Allison glances over her shoulder, as if she can hear that too. Then sighs, dragging one hand back through her hair. “Yeah, I guess…we probably all need that.”

“Did you actually get a break?” Derek says, suddenly remembering. “You couldn’t have been at your place that long before we called you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping anyway,” Allison shrugs. “I was going through my grandfather’s research.”

“That’s what he said,” Derek says, nodding at Scott.

“That…he was going to look at my grandfather’s stuff?” Allison says after a moment.

Derek makes an annoyed noise. She doesn’t throw him off nearly as much as Scott does, but that actually probably makes her trickier. It lets her catch him out more, and they both know it. “No, the whole, I need to fix this right now, and I’m the only one who can fix it, and I’m doing this because I can’t just stand here and watch people get hurt, but it’s okay if you stand there and let me fall over, thing. That’s what’s the same.”

Allison looks annoyed and amused. And then as if she’s seeing past all of that to something else, and she finds it confusing and a little—for a second, Derek thinks she might just turn around and leave. But instead she just shifts the laundry in her arms—hiding how she’s taking a deep breath—and comes closer to the bed. “I’m so glad you’ve figured out how this town works already,” she says dryly.

And there’s his exit, he thinks. Just go back to being an outsider who doesn’t know what the hell is going on, and who doesn’t want to know. She’s teasing him but her eyes are resigned; she’s not really calling him out, and she won’t. And Allison was in Derek’s position at one point—okay, so she probably had come in with a little bit more of an idea of what was going on, but not that much, and since then, she’s clearly had a lot of rude awakenings. _That’s_ what her and Scott reacting the same tells Derek, that they both just expect this now. People turning around and running away.

“If you’re going to do it, do it on the bed,” Derek says. He shifts up against the headboard, then pulls the blankets out from where they’re bunching under his knees. 

Allison frowns, not quite following. Her eyes slide from Derek to the bed to Scott to Derek. “Fall over?”

“Yeah,” Derek says. It’s getting awkward, but in the grand scheme of things…in the grand scheme of things, he’s tired and she’s tired and if the demon stormed this house right now, there’s a pretty good chance nobody will have enough energy to do anything about it. So who cares how stupid this conversation sounds? “Just get on. You’re not doing laundry right now, and if you fall in front of Laura, she’s—I’m not going to promise she’ll be any help either. She gets kind of scatterbrained when she’s stressed.”

“She’s also got Jordan to carry around, if I’m right about what Lydia was complaining about earlier,” Allison snorts. Then catches Derek’s eye and waves her hand in a half-reassuring, half-dismissive gesture. “No, it’s not—never mind, I don’t really know. I don’t know them or anything, just how they talk—maybe don’t think about it. I’m sure they’re just like the rest of us and it’s not a thing—”

“You’re too late, it is a thing, and it’s completely Laura’s thing so I don’t want to know,” Derek mutters. He glances away, then back at Allison, who isn’t quite hiding how she’s hoping and disbelieving at the same time. “There’s room, okay? You can have the other pillow, I’m not that tired. I’ll probably go down and get some more food in a minute.”

“You’re not going downstairs any more than I am,” Allison says, and then she flushes a little. Mostly over her throat, but it starts to creep over her jawline. She raises her hand as if to rub at her face, then just puffs the towels in her arms. “Derek, look, I know Scott and I can get…it’s not a big deal, it’s just some stuff that happened before you got here. You don’t have to—and it’s not really your—”

“It’s not that, it’s just—you’re going to fall over, just do it on the bed,” Derek says, annoyed. Then he grimaces and presses his hand against his temple. He’s not great at this even when he’s fully rested and taking—usually bad—advice about it from his sister or uncle. “Scott’s asleep, you guys don’t even have to talk to each other.”

Case in point, those words coming out of his mouth. But Allison doesn’t actually laugh at him. She does seem bemused, but mostly, she keeps looking at Derek as if she really wants to understand what he means.

“You know I know this stuff, right?” she finally says.

“Because you’re an Argent?” Derek says, trying and failing to make that sound less exasperated.

For some reason, Allison ends up smiling at him. She looks down at the towels in her arms, almost saying something, and then suddenly looks up as Scott moves on the bed. Her smile fades, but doesn’t quite disappear—it goes wistful, Derek thinks. 

“I mean it,” Derek finds himself saying. “Just—you’ve been helping, so far as I can tell. You definitely aren’t on the side of killing us, so just—get on the bed.”

She just stands there, and Derek thinks he’s just going to get so frustrated he’ll finally come out with something that will piss her off, and then he’s going to have to get up and…then Allison drops the laundry. Then looks like she regrets doing that, her one arm going down and out like she’s going to scoop it all up again, but even as she stoops, she suddenly huffs and instead moves the rest of the way to the bed and gets onto it.

“Oh, my God,” she says, pausing. Her eyes flick to Derek and she looks embarrassed, and then she flops into the mattress anyway. “I am so tired.”

“Yeah,” Derek says.

Allison stays lying face-down for another couple seconds. Then, just as Derek’s starting to relax, she looks up again. She’s not smiling, but she still looks like…like maybe she’s glad for him nagging her. “You know, you’re helping too.”

 _By doing what_ , Derek wants to snap at her. But he doesn’t. He keeps his mouth shut, and eventually she puts her head back down, pulling at the blankets and…right, Derek said she’d get the other pillow. He turns around and grabs it, and turns back and finds Allison gone stiff because Scott’s awake and half-up on his elbow.

“Oh,” Scott says after a moment. He smells uncertain, while Allison smells that plus nervy; Derek can see her muscles tensing in case she has to push away. He looks at her for another second, then up at Derek. He’s putting it together, Derek can see that in his face, he’s not so exhausted that he can’t figure it out, and…he sighs and just pushes the pillow in Derek’s hand. “No, keep that, Allison can have—”

“Allison is not having yours,” Allison says. Not exactly sharp, but she means it. She keeps bundling up the blankets for a makeshift pillow instead.

“You are not having a fight over this,” Derek says before he can think. And then he does think about it, and he’s not going to take the words back, because they are just completely crazy. Goddamn pillows, seriously. “Just take the pillow so we can all fall asleep already.”

“Yeah, just take it,” Scott says, while Allison is giving Derek a dirty look. Then, when she moves that look to him, he turns to Derek and pulls the pillow out from under his own head so he can turn it ninety degrees. “Here, Derek and I can share this one.”

Derek starts to say no, but then something grabs his wrist. He looks down and Allison, smiling, drags him half-off the headboard before he can dig himself in. “Yeah, just do that,” she says.

“Okay, fine,” he says, and when she looks startled, he does feel pretty satisfied.

Of course then Scott reaches over and grabs Derek’s shoulder, pulling him around so that his head ends up on the pillow before he can do anything about it. His feet swing off the bed and he has to pin his upper body in place so he can pull in his legs and not slide off, and by the time he’s stabilized himself, Scott is…Scott is lying down again, face mostly poofed into the other end of the pillow, and almost asleep, judging by his heartbeat. Allison’s a little more awake and is still trying to arrange her pillow so she doesn’t bump into Derek, but he holds his knees out of the way till she stops moving. Then lets them relax, little by little, till he can sort of feel the warmth of her head coming through the pillow, and she doesn’t wake up. So then, he figures it’s okay to go to sleep.

* * *

Derek is pretty sure that Laura peeks in at some point, because even dozing, he can sense somebody making annoying ‘awww’ faces at him. But when he actually wakes up, the family member staring at him is his mother.

He freezes. His mother immediately looks like she wants to come over and smooth down his hair and sing lullabies, which absolutely not when Scott and Allison are—are kind of draped over him and Allison’s hand is dangerously close to snugging his ass and okay. Maybe Derek should have thought through the positioning some more.

“Honey, it’s okay,” his mother says quietly. “I’m not mad at you, I know you’ve just been worried about everybody, and honestly, this place would make anybody make mistakes. So I’m just going to have you come help Peter and Stiles once you’ve washed up, okay? Laura’s still sleeping and Cora keeps forgetting to put the scanner on double-sided and you know how your uncle gets when he gets files with missing pages.”

Shit, Derek thinks. Shit, he is so screwed, and he _knew_ it was a bad idea to let Laura deal with Mom. “Um, yeah, okay…”

“All right, I’ll see you down in a second,” his mother says. She takes a couple steps towards the doorway, then stops and turns back. “When this is all over, we can talk about those two. You’re going to need a car with much better gas mileage, Derek. A Camaro on these roads is going to have ridiculous insurance premiums.”

So screwed, Derek thinks, and then he sighs and extracts himself from the bed and stumbles down the hall to the bathroom.

When he gets downstairs, the living room clearly has been the center of a recent meeting: the couch is still folded out and is covered with printouts of photos and three laptops and what looks like little origami things. Derek picks up one, then another, and then he figures out that they’re supposed to be pieces of furniture. He puts them down and Stiles smacks his elbow.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Derek snaps, because seriously, the guy just ghosted in.

“It’s my house, Derek. Also, trained a whole werewolf pack myself, I’m up on all your super-senses,” Stiles says, reaching past him and flipping over the origami Derek had just put down. Then he scoots onto the mattress on his hands and knees, very intently moving around a couple other pieces and Derek slowly starts to see the tiny diorama Stiles has going. “Mind not ruining the product of an advanced regressive algorithm?”

“I have no idea what you just said,” Derek says after a moment. The diorama doesn’t look complicated to him. He doesn’t recognize where the place is supposed to be, but still, not complicated. There’s a table and six chairs and some tiny paper boxes Stiles keeps switching around, which maybe are stand-ins for more furniture. “My mom—”

“She’s in the garage, trying to school Lydia on local geology,” Stiles says. He gives one box a last poke, then stands back and studies it while scruffing his hair. “I mean, look, you totally don’t have to stay and help so doing that is an impressive commitment, don’t get me wrong, but…I feel like that’s a bad idea. You know, telling Lydia she’s wrong. So don’t touch those, okay? I need to check the geomantic alignments before we reject this one.”

Derek opens his mouth to say that again, he doesn’t know what that means, but Stiles is already disappearing around a corner. A second later, the man stops and starts talking with—with Parrish, who, sounding groggy, is asking Stiles whether they’re absolutely sure about no backhoe. That sounds like something Derek might actually be able to understand, but he’s barely taken a step in that direction when he hears his muttered name coming from the other way.

“Oh, there you are,” Peter says, handing Derek a laptop. He pauses when Stiles yelps, his eyes flicking over that way, and then gives Derek a sharp look when Derek actually hadn’t been about to comment, or honestly, even really notice it. “Well, if you’re done cuddling the local alpha, explain to your sister how the scanner works.”

 _“I know how the scanner works, Peter!”_ Cora’s annoyed voice squawks from the laptop. When Derek flips up the half-lowered top, a slightly staticky feed of her scowling face is the first thing he sees. _“You just need to be more specific about the page numbers you want, since actually, there aren’t any? And you just keep telling me the part where it’s describing our family’s vendetta about whatever and this whole thing is written in Latin? Who the hell writes in Latin? I thought this was our old Emissary’s diary.”_

“He’s not paying attention to you,” Derek says, switching between watching her and watching Peter, who’s gone around to the other end of the couch and is squatting down and frowning at Stiles’ origami set-up. “Also, listen, things have been really shitty the last couple days, so can you just shut up and—”

 _“You shut up, okay, Laura already gave me the rundown and Mom popped in to say no, honey, you just sit home while we run this town, and just, you all owe me when you do get home,”_ Cora mutters while ducking down so only the top half of her head shows. She bobs around, doing something in—she’s in Peter’s room, actually, with the laptop propped up on one of his bookcases. _“Also, I sent over three emails while Peter was complaining this time. Do me a favor and check them.”_

“Owe you for what, going to the attic while we get tossed around here?” Derek says under his breath.

His sister isn’t listening to him, and is back to complaining about the Latin that he knows she actually knows pretty well, because unlike him, she actually can handle magic and is just too lazy to bother most of the time. Derek watches her head move around for a couple more seconds, then minimizes the window and pokes around to see if Peter’s got his email up on this laptop. Nope, and actually, this seems to be Stiles’ dad’s laptop, and also, this Lydia person writes really nasty emails about how much work it is to arrange midnight retarring of the road to cover up bloodstains.

“Cora says check your email,” Derek says, putting the laptop down on the top of the couch.

Peter’s no longer looking at the origami, and instead is sifting through a handful of blown-up photos. “I did,” he says. “Is your mother still arguing with Lydia?”

“I have no idea,” Derek says. “Stiles said they were in the garage for geology? Why do we need geology?”

His uncle lowers the photos and looks at Derek, who just walked into this and didn’t realize he was supposed to be tracking all of the weird little feuds that popped up when he was sleeping. Because why would you have those going on right now anyway, and other things that make complete sense but that Derek is never going to ask Peter because Derek doesn’t feel like getting murdered.

“Because land isn’t actually frozen in time, and this being California, home of seismic—” Peter starts in one of those lecture tones of his.

But before he can get really into it, Stiles walks back into the room. Parrish sort of comes with him, but promptly heels and then about-faces when he sees who else is there. Which is weird, and Derek maybe would have gone after him if the smell in the room wasn’t even weirder.

“So. Um. I actually found a section in Agrippa, it matches up,” Stiles says. Semi-avoiding Peter’s gaze, while tattoos flick up and down his wrists.

It’s actually sort of nausea-inducing, all those twisty spirals blinking in and out, so Derek looks away and across the room, Peter is nodding with the exaggerated motions of somebody trying not to spook a small animal. And Peter doesn’t care about that kind of thing, and Stiles is definitely not a small animal.

“I thought so,” Peter says. “So we know it’s not too far off the concept of a genius loci, which means—”

“But you know if this is all geomancy-based, it’s really gonna be the territorial claim, right?” Stiles says. He sounds upset, but smells nervous. “So you’re really going to have to do that, give it all up.”

Peter’s eyes widen slightly, but when he speaks, he’s very calm. All in all, he’s being restrained to the point that Derek sticks a hand in his pocket to make sure he still has a bit of knotted red thread on him. “Well, it’s more of a rubber stamp on what’s already practical reality. And we’re not tied to what our ancestors did. Honestly, I don’t think that’s going to be the difficult piece here. I—”

“We said we’d kill her,” Stiles says, suddenly angry.

Weirdly, Peter doesn’t seem offended, or even defensive. If anything, he looks…looks _sympathetic_. “I know, Stiles.”

“Okay, well, you don’t know—” Then Stiles turns around and walks out, heading towards the kitchen.

It’s really abrupt, even when Derek hears his mother and another woman—he’s guessing that’s Lydia—speaking with Stiles. And Peter still doesn’t look angry about it. He does look like it bothers him, but more along the lines of something that might end in a body later, after he’s had time to work out how slow a death it’s going to be. And Stiles clearly isn’t going to be the guy dying, in that scenario.

“Okay,” Derek says. “So—the demon—”

“Is his mother, Derek,” Peter says quietly. “When they tried to exorcise it before, she was taken, but she was never possessed. She managed to overpower the demon, and now she’s the…John.”

At least Stiles’ father looks sorry when Derek jumps. Okay, it’s the kind of sorry where the guy never even fully glances Derek’s way, but he does grimace on his way to staring hard at Peter. “Marin has some ideas about putting her to rest. I think she finally—she finally gets what we’re trying to say, but…”

“I’m happy to look them over,” Peter says after a moment. He and Stiles’ dad aren’t exactly sizing each other up, but they definitely are wary of each other. “Not that I think she’s unqualified, but druids are supposed to be barred from certain types of magic, and most of necromancy falls under that.”

“That kind of sounds like a qualification issue to me,” Stiles’ dad says, but he’s dry about it, not aggressive.

That’s what’s bugging Derek about them. It’s not aggressive at all—it’s not like they’re challenging each other, but it’s definitely more strained than just them being polite. And then Stiles walks back into the room, with Derek’s mom visible behind him, and both Peter and Stiles’ dad go on alert. Weirdly, it’s more Stiles’ dad than Peter, given what Derek is smelling.

“Son,” Stiles’ dad says.

“Hey,” Stiles says, just as tensely. His eyes flick between his father and Peter, and then he makes a move towards the couch, while his dad shuffles like the man’s going to slide behind Stiles and talk to Derek’s mom. But then Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and turns around, and opens his eyes just as his dad stops to let him touch the man’s arm. “I had to tell them, okay, this is just as big a part of the magic as their first alpha, nothing’s going to make sense if we don’t take everything into account and I had to—”

Stiles’ dad’s expression starts to screw up, like he’s just going to brush off Stiles or something like that for doing this in front of other people. Which seems like an asshole thing to do, even if Derek has about five percent of the context and doesn’t know either of them, and if it’s going to go down that way, Derek’s not going to be the asshole bystander guy. So he backs up towards the stairs, only for his foot to hit the floor hard enough to make Stiles start.

Peter glares at him. Which Derek suddenly is starting to understand, and sometimes he really hates having the sense of smell he does. But then Derek’s mother lifts her chin, catches Derek’s eye, and nods for him to stay put, and that, Derek doesn’t get. His mom doesn’t like getting involved in other people’s fights anymore than he does.

“Stiles, Jesus,” Stiles’ dad says, making Stiles turn back around. It’s not like Stiles’ dad has forgotten where they are—in fact, he glances over his shoulder at Derek’s mom—but then he sighs and looks at Stiles and clearly doesn’t give a shit. “It’s fine.”

“It’s…what?” Stiles says, head jerking up. He stares at his father, one hand pinching up a wad of his pants and then twisting it. “Wait, but—”

“Well, shit, it’s not like she’s really hiding it now, is she,” his father mutters. Rubs one hand over his face, then looks again at Stiles. The strain in his expression now has a lot more to do with sadness than fatigue. “Look, I just—I just didn’t want it to be worse than it has been. But that’s stupid, and—we’re just getting this done, all right?”

“It wasn’t _stupid_ stupid,” Stiles says. His voice catches a little and Derek gets a whiff of wet-salt in the air, and turns away.

Scott and Allison are standing on the staircase. They make the same exact embarrassed ducking motion when they see Derek, and then Allison lets out a silent sigh and pushes Scott up by one shoulder, and just leans over the rail to hear better. Derek shrugs when Scott blinks at him, because it’s not like Derek knows who’s supposed to know what around here.

“Yeah, well…” Then Stiles’ dad makes another face. This one is mostly about himself, from the way he ducks his head when he makes it, and he doesn’t stop making it till Stiles snort-chokes and stumbles forward a couple inches and does some odd combination of elbowing his father and glomming onto his father’s arm.

“Derek,” Derek’s mom says, while Stiles and his dad perform one of those most awkward, yet intense hugs Derek has ever seen.

“What?” Derek says, jerking in place. Then remembers he’s actually holding onto something, and fumbles with the laptop.

The casing slips under his fingers and he steps back so he can get his knee up, then finally gets hold of it. When he looks up, people have rearranged themselves: Stiles and his dad have moved into the living room with Peter, who’s picked up one of the origami chairs and who isn’t getting yelled at, while Scott and Allison seem to have decided they might as well come down. And a couple more people are walking in behind Derek’s mom, who comes over and holds out her hand for the laptop.

Derek gives it to her, then realizes what she probably wants. “I’m not sure if Cora’s still—she was looking for something.”

“She emailed me the right one this time,” Peter says from the living room, looking at one of the other laptops.

Laura’s finally shown up, with Parrish and two women, one a redhead who immediately tells Stiles the sonar’s not going to get here for a week. “That’s Marin, Deaton’s sister,” Scott whispers to Derek, nodding at the other woman. “She’s a druid.”

“What’s going on?” Allison says, walking by both of them. “Are we going to try attacking it again?”

“No, we’re gonna put her to rest for good,” Stiles says. He sounds more angry than certain, and takes a deep breath before he goes on. “So you were—you had the right idea. It’s about what the first Hales did when they got here. They claimed this land, and they’re still technically claiming it, so the de—so Mom, she can’t take it over like she wants. Not while the Hale claim is in the way.”

He keeps glancing over at his dad as he talks, but his dad just looks unhappy. The guy doesn’t interrupt and even nods for Stiles to go on at one point. Then, when Stiles looks away, he slumps against the wall. Parrish glances over, but Derek’s mom just—comes up with a glass of water from somewhere and hands it to Stiles’ dad, who blinks in surprise. Then shrugs and mutters a thanks.

Derek can feel Laura trying to stare him into looking at her, and he ignores her as hard as he can. Yeah, he saw that, and no, he doesn’t want to make ‘what the hell’ faces about it. She should know him by now.

Besides, Derek thinks, looking around the room, this whole explanation where Stiles’ mom is the demon isn’t really taking too many people by surprise, and that’s more relevant. Sure, Scott looks pained and then pushes his way around the couch to stand next to Stiles, but he doesn’t look like this is _new_. And Allison—she’d looked surprised by Stiles’ sudden nod towards her. She doesn’t look shocked by anything that comes after it.

“What claim?” Laura asks. “I mean, we moved out.”

“Our first alpha and her first pack,” their mother answers. “They bought this place with their lives. Even though they’re dead now, that kind of sacrifice doesn’t…just go away. We left but we never actually renounced it.”

“We’re going to now,” Peter says. He stands up from the laptop and eyes Derek, then Laura. “If you’d like to object—”

“I just want to know why we didn’t get to this quicker,” Laura says, annoyed. “What happened to we don’t hang onto things that don’t—”

They’re going to get into it, Derek can tell from how Peter’s tilting his head back. “But doesn’t that just clear the way for the demon?” Derek asks first. “If the whole idea is we want to stop it, and taking this place over is what it wants to do…”

“That actually is the right question,” Peter says. Then, before anybody can call him on actually complimenting Derek, he bends down and picks up the laptop. “It’s a necessary step because we need to get her out of the house. Yes, it does risk making her stronger, but that’s not her goal. Her goal is to reunite with her family, and in order to stop _that_ , we need to get her out of our house.”

“We’re gonna bury her,” Stiles says tightly. So tightly that his dad’s head twists in his direction, and then his dad shoulders off the wall and starts to move along the couch towards him. “Because she’s…she’s gone. She’s gone. We’ve been keeping her in that house, just as much as she has, and we need to stop and just…we’re gonna let her go.”

“The key will be how willing she is to accept that,” Marin says. “She’s had years to strengthen her position. It won’t be easy—”

She’s cut off by a bitter snort from Stiles’ dad. He didn’t make it all the way over to Stiles and is leaning over to poke at the origami, while Stiles blinks hard at the top of his head. “She’s been doing it for something that doesn’t exist. This isn’t her family now. We’ll make that clear. So it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with her accepting it. It’s just how it _is_.”

“You can always go back and look after your brother,” Lydia, by process of elimination, says, smiling at Marin the way that alphas do at cornered omegas. “Burial rites don’t call specifically for a druid, after all, and we wouldn’t want to force anyone to be involved in this.”

Marin’s eyes narrow and she stares back at Lydia, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Bad blood,” Allison mutters to Derek.

“Long story,” Scott says at the same time.

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here,” Derek’s mother suddenly announces, stepping up where everyone can easily see her. “We will only have one shot at this, and if we’re going to make it count, we need to have every part of the plan worked out. I know it’s been a very long time for all of you who live here, but a little more time will only help.”

“No, agreed, we’re all pretty experienced in how rushing things usually makes them worse,” Stiles’ dad says, with a sigh and a nod. He moves some paper chairs around, then straightens up. “The burial part’s easy to figure out, just going to be—be tricky to do. Now, this renouncing your claim part—”

“How does that work?” Allison asks, stepping forward. She’s more watching Derek’s mom than Stiles’ dad; Derek’s mom doesn’t change her stance but she does look a little amused, which makes Derek grimace. “I mean, since you haven’t lived here in years, none of the claim marks would have been kept up anyway, and you haven’t regularly fought for this place, so I just…I don’t understand what claim you still have.”

“Well, well, I see your education has been reasonably thorough,” Peter says, also looking amused. Then he…doesn’t exactly twitch, it’s too subtle for that, but he definitely bites back whatever he’d been about to say. Gives Derek’s mom an annoyed look, and somehow, she does something without actually moving her face that makes him look sharply at Derek. And then he’s amused again, and Derek is even more worried. “On the other hand, that really only accounts for the average pack, and they don’t usually hold an area for more than a generation, if that. You have to remember our family lived here for over a hundred years before we moved out.”

Laura sucks her breath sharply over her teeth. Derek means to just look at her, but somehow, he ends up speaking up instead. “Our dead,” he says. Allison turns around to look at him, eyes widening, and he nods. “We still have them buried here. Well—”

“Exactly,” Peter says, blinking. “Impressive, Derek. Twice in one night.”

“Twice what? Isn’t that where you were going?” Scott says. He’s polite about it, but still, the way he’s standing, his shoulders spread, slightly in front of Derek, is kind of a fuck-you in werewolf body language. 

But does he know that, Derek thinks. Peter also seems to be wondering, since he just tilts his head and frowns and doesn’t then go on to skewer Scott’s ego with sarcasm. Then he gets distracted, because Stiles is clearing his throat.

“Anyway, before we get into how much I got to teach Scott about alpha bitchitude,” Stiles says, looking like he both knows and is unimpressed with everything. “That’s our current missing piece. We can’t figure out where you people buried the first Hale pack. Granted, Mom can’t either, which is why she’s been running an HGTV: Homicide Edition marathon, but…yeah.”

“Oh, that’s why you need Cora to send you those. You’re trying to figure out what Gramps and Gran did to renovate the place?” Laura says to Peter.

“No, if it was _their_ generation, we’d just have her dig up their claws from the basement and FedEx them,” Peter says. “And here I thought _you_ were the one who listened.”

Laura jerks her head back, annoyed, while their mother sighs and reaches towards her. Derek’s just going to stay out of this argument, but before he can step back, Allison bumps his arm. She glances apologetically at him, but mostly wants to ask Talia something. “If you think you can get something from old claws, Derek and—did anybody tell you, we were—”

“Oh, yeah. No, I told them,” Jordan says. Then Lydia pointedly clears her throat and he hunches a little before catching himself. “Well, I told Stiles, who I assumed would tell—Allison checked out the old cemetery, and there was a Hale buried in it, except it turned out to be undead and attacked them and that’s why Scott was such a mess earlier. And anyway, when we tried to move what was left of it, it just turned into dust. Even the claws.”

“ _Who_ was buried there?” Peter says sharply.

Jordan blinks hard, then telegraphs his turn to look at Stiles, who flaps an annoyed hand at him. And who doesn’t really look at Peter, Derek notes. Even though, once he’s over his initial surprise, Peter looks more puzzled than angry.

“It’s just this—we ruled it out a while ago, this whole thing where Juliette Hale—she’s the one who married out to a non-were, she wasn’t actually part of a backwoods necromantic cult,” Stiles says. He rubs at his face and keeps not-looking looking at Peter. “We weren’t keeping it back, we just didn’t think whatever curse was on her because she married out was actually related to this.”

“That wasn’t what I was saying. I know that’s what my grandfather’s papers said, but it’s not what I _thought_ ,” Allison says, her voice rising a little.

“No, I know, I knew what you were saying, and I get we were wrong about the Hales being involved,” Stiles says. He sounds irritated, smells guilty, and then his head jerks up and he looks at Peter and the irritation fades from his face, while the guilt gets stronger. “I mean—”

Why do all these people just feel bad about things they didn’t do, Derek wonders for the umpteenth time. “Okay, well, they’re buried somewhere under the house and we just don’t know where, right? So that’s what the origami’s for?”

“Yes,” Peter says. A little quick about it, with an eye-flick at Stiles like Stiles is the one he’s trying to distract. “Everything’s centered around the kitchen. A few of us have been in there—been in what the demon’s trying to make in there, and we’ve been comparing notes about what changes the most. If it hasn’t changed, then it’s probably not something we should look into.”

“The cabinets change the most, especially around the fireplace,” Jordan says. 

“You’ve been in there a lot?” Laura asks, frowning.

“Well, I’m a hellhound, it can’t really drain me. I can’t kill it or make it go away, but I can carry people out of there, and we end up having to do that a lot,” Jordan says, shrugging. “Anyway, if I was going to bet money on it, I’d say the fireplace.”

Derek’s mom nods. “That’s about where Peter and I were landing as well, but we’ve built over that spot so many times—we were hoping our old Emissary might have some notes on it, since you usually anchor core wards to a flagstone, and you usually put _those_ around the central fireplace.”

“So can’t we just dig up all the rocks till we hit something?” Derek asks. “Look, how many layers can there be?”

“I suppose now’s not the time to give lessons in historical building styles,” Peter says with a sigh. “Let me just point out that this area was and in fact continues to be locally known for its stone quarries. It’d be much easier if we could just—if we had _something_ from the time period in question. Even without claws, there are spells we can use to try and divine—”

“Like a key?” Allison suddenly says.

“Well, yes, that would be the obvious metaphor,” Peter says.

“What? No, like a real key,” Derek says, digging out the one Allison gave him. “As in Juliette Hale had this buried with her so it’s old and important and was supposedly all about what let our family stay here for so long, right?”

Well, okay, then, Derek thinks as everyone turns to stare at him. One point for him. Finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep in mind, this Derek never went through the Alpha Pack or Peter resurrecting or the darach or all the other canonical TW horrors. So if you're a werewolf and you've never lived in Beacon Hills, what would be scary? (he might be a closet Wolverine fan)
> 
> I never really think of Scott as stupid per se, so much as lacking in common sense. But that doesn't mean he can't get a clue now and then. It just means he does the wrong things with them.


	17. Chapter 17

Marin and Lydia promptly hold a scrying session over the key, since if Peter handled it, his blood relationship would skew the results. The same goes for Stiles and John—who need to save their strength anyway. It’s a logical deployment of available resources and Talia still doesn’t like it.

“Oh, as if you can’t trust me to spot a misplaced cantrip,” Peter mutters, as he and Talia watch the pair from the hall doorway. Then elbows her when she doesn’t immediately reply. He can preen all he wants about style, but ruffle him even a little and the huffy teenager comes out. “All _you’re_ accomplishing is a spot on Lydia’s hit list.”

“Is that important?” Talia murmurs back.

Peter looks at her as if she’s being absurd, and then realizes what he’s doing and looks puzzled. As he should be, taking a barely-mature banshee that seriously. Then again, Talia thinks as she follows the drift of Peter’s gaze across the room, it’s not so much Lydia. 

Stiles is holed up in that corner, apparently with the same idea as Peter. To give credit where due, Marin holds up under the scrutiny, and completes the ritual without a hitch. She and Lydia confirm that the bones of Talia’s ancestors are buried somewhere under the fireplace, in some kind of metal box or chest.

Immediately after that, most of the group plunge into research, with Peter calling Cora again to order more pages from their old Emissary’s diaries while Stiles and Lydia produce a ridiculous number of historical photos of the house. It’s all for very good reasons: they can throw together all the protective charms and amulets they want, but at the end of the day, the plan consists of walking into the demon’s house and trying to dig up the chest before the demon knocks out too many of them. So they might as well try to figure out the exact depth of the chest and the make and size and any potential magical protections on it, and every other detail.

It all makes sense, but Talia finds…the people aren’t off-putting, and neither are what they’re doing. But having all of this attention—having the whole thing _actually_ turn on her old family home, that’s what leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

So she goes to the kitchen and starts cooking, and that’s where John catches up with her. “You all right?” he says.

She looks over at him, with his bloodshot eyes and greyish complexion and badly-wrinkled clothes—at least he’s changed out of his uniform. Then she looks down at the giant bowl of soy-marinated chicken she’s massaging.

“I’m always like this,” John says, his half-closed eyes waking a little with irritation. “Anyway, it’s been…this must be a weird trip for you.”

“Again,” Talia says after a moment of looking at him.

He continues to look irritated with her, in a weary, faintly wry way. “Okay. So you really fine with giving this place up?”

“Of course I am. I’m not—it’s already happened, as far as I’m concerned, and we just forgot to send in the paperwork,” Talia says, and then she grimaces as the chicken squelches loudly under her fingers. “I’m not asking you whether you’re fine, am I?”

She’s mashed a thigh. The bone running through its middle is broken, the fragments moving against her fingertips when she lifts it, the flesh whitened where the muscle fibers have been crushed. She grimaces again and steps over to the trashcan and drops the ruined meat into it, then turns to the sink to wash her hands off. That done, she steps back and reaches—but there’s no towel hanging from the cabinet knobs below the sink. Or above it. There are no towels near the sink at all.

Then she remembers the paper-towel roll she’d seen when she’d walked in, and grimaces again. That’ll be behind her.

“You waiting for me to storm out or something?” John asks, also behind her.

Talia startles, then bites her lip. Then makes her face smooth and puts her dripping hands down and turns around. “Well, like I said, I’m not asking you,” she says as calmly and indifferently as she can.

He isn’t buying a second of it, says the expression on John’s face. And not only that, he’s almost smiling about it. “Can’t be because you think you’ve made me mad,” he says dryly. “You haven’t worried about that since you got here.”

“Well, because like I keep telling you people, I don’t have any reason to care what goes on here, now that I know where all of my family members are,” Talia says, annoyed. She really shouldn’t be, she recognizes that. She should be relieved that he’s not offended. He’s a powerful mage, even if it’s demon-granted, and he’s obviously got the major players in this town on his side. She shouldn’t be prodding at him at all, and yet…why the hell does he think it’s so damn funny? “I probably should be asking, if only to ensure we’re not putting ourselves at risk for no good reason—”

“Yeah, about that, why the change of heart?” John asks. Then, as she stiffens, he tilts his head and reaches behind himself and pulls over the paper towels. “I think it’s sincere, but I’ve been here long enough, I do have to ask.”

Talia starts to answer him, then stops herself. Instead she tears off a square of paper towel and methodically dries her fingers. She has chicken juice under her nails; she has to wad the corner of the towel a little in order to squinch it out. 

“It’s not a change of heart,” she finally mutters. “I never said I was interested in watching you all die, and that’s where you’re headed.”

“Well, if you left again, you wouldn’t have to watch,” John points out.

“It’s as if you _want_ me to go after you,” Talia says.

The amusement simmering in John’s face abruptly blanks out, and Talia—she sucks her breath, then raises her hand to apologize. She’s being petty, pushing at him so she doesn’t have to sort out what’s going on in her own head, and if nothing else, doing that to someone who’s about to undergo an—in the _best_ -case scenario—emotionally traumatic confrontation with his demonic wife is just self-defeating.

But before she can, John sighs and sags his hip against the counter. “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe—she’s been after me and Stiles so long, I probably have forgotten how to deal with anything outside of that. Anyway, you don’t have to answer anything I ask. You’re already sticking around, that’s plenty.”

“I actually didn’t,” Talia says before she can help herself.

John’s brows rise a little. “It’s like you want me to be the bad guy here.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous, you’re not. You’re—you had this happen to you. Frankly, it’d be stupid to ask if you’re fine because you’d have to be a complete psychopath to be fine,” Talia says. Again, before she really thinks it through, but…she’s going to stand behind that one.

“And I’m not a complete psycho if I go through with this?” John says. Before he even finishes, he’s wincing, and he gets his hand up immediately after. “I’m going to, I am. I get that—it’s not just we have to, all right? I get that that’s not the woman I married living in that house, that that’s not really even _living_ that she’s after. I…I get…”

This time, Talia stops herself from speaking. But it’s hard and she knows how gawky she must look just then, with cheeks puffed out from the words she’s sealed her lips against. She wishes she understood why she finds John so disarming.

“I get that we’re killing her,” John says. He’s a little abrupt about it, but…less angry than she’d expected. Than she thinks he probably deserves to me. “I even get that it’s like—like your family, it’s not really doing it so much as putting a stamp on what’s already been done. It’s been—it’s been a long fourteen years, and I just…I’m not really that good of a person. I started hating her a long time ago. Same with not caring that that carries over to what I remember of her before this all happened. I just—I can’t have both of those Claudias in my head, I’d go insane. More insane than I am.”

“You actually are much more stable than I’d probably be,” Talia says after a moment. Then laughs as he blinks at her. “John, my family was founded on an entire pack’s _massacre_. Willing or not, doesn’t that say something about their priorities? Their territory over their lives—”

“I thought you said it was legend,” John says. “So you don’t know exactly why they did it.”

“Well, no, but I know—I know how my family would think. Up till me,” Talia says, and then stops, because she can hear her voice tightening. She looks around and then pulls herself up upon seeing the bowl of chicken, which had completely slipped her mind. Maybe she should rest up again; God knows you need control over your memories around here. “You do what you have to do to put things behind you. And then, when you have a little space, and time, and you’ve gone through other things that you can compare them to…then you might be able to look at them again.”

John inhales a little, like he’s going to respond, and then he just looks at her. Quiet, thoughtful. Wistful—she thinks that might be it, why he’s always catching her off-balance. He keeps looking like he likes the moments about her that put other people off, or scare them, or drive them to murder. And it’s different from…Peter likes those moments too, but he’s her brother, he likes them because he thinks the same way. John clearly doesn’t, and she doesn’t get the sense he’s wistful because he wishes he was like her. He looks like he just… _likes_ her that way.

“I didn’t want Stiles to think of her as his mother,” John says after a while. His tone is soft. “It wasn’t so much that I thought he’d hurt less that way—it was a little of that, but he’s always been better at separating her before, and her after. It was just selfish, really. It made it easier for me if he did it that way. But he’s right, we can’t just keep doing that. Hating her keeps her alive too. She’s just got to be…we have to lay her to rest.”

“It’s not going to be easy. Nobody ever wants to stop fighting, not really—it takes a long time to beat somebody down that much, that they won’t anymore,” Talia finds herself telling him as she takes the chicken over to the stove. “Believe me, I know. It’s not like—we didn’t leave because we were cowards, or because we didn’t want to fight.”

John raises his brows again. “Somebody called you a coward?”

“A lot of people have. And they’ve regretted it. Or they would have, if they’d lived longer,” Talia says, with relish. She’s not surprised when he doesn’t look revolted. “But they don’t see—even other werewolves don’t see. It’s not that I won’t defend my pack’s claim, but I just never have seen why a claim has to be always and only land, or power, or anything except my pack getting live, and be safe, and do what makes them happy. So no, this isn’t going to be a problem for me. Because I’m not actually giving anything up, from my perspective.”

“I get that,” John says simply, and then comes over to get her a baking pan.

Talia puts the bowl down and goes looking for foil to line the pan, and when she turns back, box in hand, she finds John’s holding a can of nonstick spray. He spritzes the pan and then starts plopping the chicken on it. After a moment, she comes up beside him—he glances over but doesn’t stop—and takes the bowl to the sink to wash out.

“It’s going to work,” John says. He’s looking at the stove, setting it to preheat. “I’ll put her in her grave if it means my kid gets out of this—this goddamn torture.”

“Well, just remember I’m blaming it all on you, if he asks,” Talia says.

She starts to stick the bowl in the dishwasher’s rack, but something catches the corner of her eye and she looks up sharply. John looks back at her as if he doesn’t know either, but then he snorts. “I’m not planning on _dying_ with her. We clear on that?”

“Just checking,” Talia mutters, bending down again. “Can you blame me?”

“Guess not,” John says. His gaze sweeps at her, and then she hears the oven door opening and shutting, and the slight squeak of his shoe-heel twisting. He takes a step away and then pauses. “Listen, if I were you, I wouldn’t stay a second longer than I had to, but—I can get you a coffee on the way to the airport. Coffee’s about the least I can get you.”

Talia straightens up. “Are you asking? Or telling?”

She honestly wants to know. She can’t read his tone, the way it’s noncommittal but leans ten different ways within the same word, and all he smells of is fatigue. His face doesn’t give her much to go on, either—same slightly amused, slightly exasperated stare.

“Guess we’ll find out,” is all he says, and then he turns around for real.

She could stop him, she supposes. But…she lets him go, and instead starts trying to dig up enough vegetables for a salad. It’ll give her hands something to do while she thinks about it.

* * *

By that afternoon, they have the location of the bones scoped out and the steps in the laying-to-rest ritual for Claudia worked out. All that’s left is to figure out whether they feel like tearing through an additional five layers of flooring, or if it’s really a good idea to let Claudia pull the architectural structure from someone’s head and do that for them.

“I don’t think she can actually deal with the bones herself,” Stiles says. “I mean, actually—I know she can’t. Because if it was just about reaching down there and getting them, she would’ve done it years ago. So she’s not going to snatch them the second we dig them up.”

“I agree,” Peter says, staring hard at Laura as she slowly lets her attempt to talk over Stiles wither. “Which is all the more motivation for her to possess the person telling her, so she can make them do the destruction. We have to keep this timed to the ritual—”

Stiles doesn’t quite hide the slight flash of hurt that goes over his face when he realizes Peter’s not actually siding with him—and also completely misses how Peter deliberately slows to let him interrupt. “I’m not _saying_ we send somebody in so they get their brain pulped, did I?” he snaps. “And if you’re gonna talk about timing it, listen, I—”

“I don’t think he said that either, to be fair,” Scott says. “Look, let’s not get worked up over this, we’re just—we’re planning it out.”

And Talia hasn’t missed how her son is staring at Scott as if he’s reinventing alpha leadership one polite objection at a time, when he isn’t giving the Argent girl exasperated looks about it. Or how her daughter was unusually invested in ensuring that Parrish got enough lunch, despite the constant needling about what hellhounds eat. She doesn’t have to ask a single one of them whether they object to the plan on the grounds of just not caring, and she doesn’t know how she feels about that.

So instead she follows Marin as the woman excuses herself to the kitchen to get more water. “This ritual,” Talia starts.

In the other room, Laura suddenly starts asking loud, dumb questions about anti-possession charms, which Peter answers in an equally loud, dumb way. Oh, his responses are intelligent enough, but the sarcasm’s about the level of a playground snit. He can do better half-conscious with wolfsbane working through his bloodstream. Stiles must be doing something.

“I’m not going to put your family at risk,” Marin says, before Talia can go back and see what that is. She looks at Talia calmly enough, but the pitcher she’s lifting rattles against the lip of her mug because she misjudges the distance between the two, and she’s only just self-possessed enough to reset it without a jump in her heartbeat. “You’ve already done that.”

“You’re getting what you want, aren’t you?” Talia says after a moment. “Demon gone, and Stiles and John will be the ones responsible. Then healing your brother will just be up to him.”

Marin’s lips thin. She puts the pitcher down on the counter with exaggerated deliberation. “I didn’t want anyone here dead.”

“You also didn’t want to come. And you’re still here only because of your brother’s coma. You said that yourself,” Talia says. She crosses over to the other end of the counter and puts her hands against the edge, leaning on them. She doesn’t _smile_ when Marin’s gaze drifts to her still-blunt fingernails—if Peter’s going to overdo it, she’d better show some restraint—but she does make sure to catch the other woman’s eye when Marin looks back up. “Since I _am_ helping, I’m just being careful about who else is around my family. I didn’t get here by neglecting that.”

“I’m aware, Alpha Hale.” Marin’s eyes and face abruptly close up into a cool, expressionless mask.

Credit to her, the woman doesn’t look away as she lifts her glass and takes a sip from it. She lowers the glass, still watching Talia, and swallows, and then lifts the glass again and Talia suppresses a sigh. Being difficult to intimidate is a quality of the druids that Talia admires, but sometimes she thinks it also gets in the way of having a straightforward conversation. She might be threatening the woman, but she’s also laying her feelings out in the open, and the least she could get is some—well, she knows better than to expect transparency here.

Talia starts to turn away and Marin clears her throat. When Talia looks back, the other woman is still blanking her face, but there’s a brittleness to it that gives away her fear, even before Talia gets to the woman’s scent.

“I was Blackwood’s Emissary before this,” Marin says. A touch of satisfaction comes into her eyes at Talia’s surprise; it is tempered by bitterness, but nevertheless unmistakable. “For a few months, that’s all, and then we heard about what had happened about Kali’s pack, and my brother started looking into it. I could have stayed with Blackwood’s pack—he didn’t want any part of this. But a druid had died—or not. We weren’t sure at that point what had even _happened_ , and even if Julia was—she was a druid, she’d died with her pack. She deserved somebody looking for her body.”

“Her pack wasn’t completely gone,” Talia says, and then she gives Marin a nod before the other woman corrects her. “I meant Kali, not Scott.”

Marin’s lips twist a little. “If you don’t trust us with your bodies, why do you think we’d trust you with ours?” she says.

She and Talia regard each other for a few minutes in silence. The debate in the other room’s died down, but Talia can still pick out enough to know that the relevant people haven’t yet noticed who’s left. Which isn’t really something they should be concerned about anyway; she’s committed herself and her family to settling old matters, not to starting new fights. This is only about ensuring that everyone else feels the same.

“Is that it?” she asks. “Because your brother—”

“He’s alive,” Marin says curtly. She pauses, that mask of hers flexing so that the cracks almost start in it, and then she deliberately takes another sip of water. It’s a good way to hide the deep breath she also takes. “He’s alive. And the living come first. I want him out of here, Alpha Hale. I want to take him somewhere he can heal. And then…”

“And then is the future, and the future is unpredictable, no matter how many mystics and seers try to tell me differently,” Talia says, shrugging. “Well, then I think we don’t have a dispute, druid. You see to your bodies and we’ll see to ours.”

Marin’s lips thin. She nods slowly, and then picks up the pitcher. As she turns to put it back in the fridge, Talia pivots the other way, going back into the hall.

But she doesn’t rejoin the others just yet. She just looks at them from where she is, watching the way her brother is squabbling over bits of paper with Stiles, how her children are alternating between monitoring it and talking quietly with the others. John’s further back, taking a call by the window—something about speedtraps, because despite all of this, he’s still running an actual police department. He stifles a yawn into his palm as Talia looks on, then rubs that hand over his eyes and keeps telling his officers where they’ll move the stops.

No, it’s never been about the land. Her family was wrong about that. And if it takes her coming back to this damned town to fix it, then—then fine, Talia thinks. Because it’s never been about where her pack was. And so help her, as long as she’s alpha, it never will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of what irritates me about the canonical druids is that you never really get much of a sense of what's in it for them personally, whether they're indoctrinated into some sort of mission statement or they like being adjacent to werewolf power or what. If you just have somebody acting as a magical advisor (and Deaton treads dangerously close to Magical Black Guy at times) without explaining why they'd bother instead of doing their own, less risky, magic thing, you've got a Plot Device for assisting the hero(ine), not a person.
> 
> Short chapter after some really long ones, but we're heading into the big climatic fight scene next.


	18. Chapter 18

By the time everything is mapped out, it’s only an hour from midnight, and obviously, it makes no sense to attack when Stiles’ mother will be at her strongest. Just after dawn is best, when the sun is undeniably risen and going from strength to strength, and the dead are drawn back to their graves, and all the world is pushing towards life and light. 

That’s the theory, anyway. The reality is that everyone in the house, Peter included, is exhausted to the point of irrational hotheadedness, and that it’s all they can do to sit there and wait for the hours to crawl by. Sleep is completely out of the question. Of course they’ve preparations to make, but from some angles, it might not be the smartest idea to be working on delicate magics that toe the line between light and dark, not in the mood that they’re all in.

“If this is how they’ve been living for the last few years, I just wonder that the body count isn’t higher,” Talia remarks. Because she knows him, and has followed him out to the garage, where they’re both sorting through their luggage for anything useful. “And that they’re still so—attached to each other. Even the druid.”

Peter looks up from the candles he’s _finally_ found, a scathing retort on his lips, only to find his sister smiling at him. He cherishes his frustration with her for another moment, then rolls his eyes. “Letting me think you’re losing your mind is not reassuring, Talia.”

“Oh, I never said loyalty, did I? At least not with Marin,” she says. She finishes stacking the bottles of holy water and then hands him the emptied bag. Then sits back on her heels, hands hanging loosely between her knees as she watches him sniff at the candles. “She does mean to see this through, whatever her reasons are.”

All that deserves is a snort, and he doesn’t give her one because he knows she’ll just take it as an excuse to go off on some other tangent. Not that he wouldn’t welcome a distraction, but he, at least, knows that’s not his brain talking. They need to stay focused on what’s to come and if she won’t do it, he’s not about to repeat her mistakes.

“I have thought about this,” Talia says, her tone deliberate enough that Peter puts down the candles. She’s still smiling when Peter looks at her, but it’s sober. It knows things without taking delight in them. “I’d rather send you all home, you know. It only really requires an alpha to renounce the claim, and Laura’s—”

“If you honestly think you’re going to send her and Derek home with _me_ to watch over your children, you must not want them anymore,” Peter says sharply. 

More sharply than their usual teasing merits, and the way his sister lifts her brows and acknowledges that and doesn’t hold it against him just makes his temper flare all the more. For a moment, and then…it’s badly-lit in this garage. Oh, he knows they’re safe in here, but it’s such a small, weak refuge they have, with water cracks in the concrete walls and the constant fritz of the lone bulb overhead. It’s nothing compared to what’s outside. And besides, they were never meant to hide and cower, to shrink back from the night. They should be out there enjoying the dark, reveling in the shadows.

“Well, I wasn’t going to ask them to look after you either, considering the entire point is to keep this pack together, without repeating family history,” Talia says after a second. Her sarcasm is a little off too, and they both know it. She closes her eyes briefly and he thinks about reaching out and holding her shoulder, which looks so much like it wants to slump. But then she opens her eyes again and tired as she is, she’s not about to fall. He knows her. “I just want to know, Peter. That when this is all over—”

“Talia, we’re here,” Peter says. Irritably. He can’t help himself, with all of the horrors and fights he’s been through in the past couple days—with all of the times he’s genuinely wondered whether he’d lost some or all of his family. All of that, and she still has to ask him, and sometimes he really can’t blame her ex for the way her children turned out. “We are here, in this damned town, and we are going to dig up our family’s bones. And we aren’t doing it because you’re ordering us to, we’re doing it because that thing in our old house _deserves_ fangs in the throat, with this ridiculous Stephen King knock-off nonsense it’s been perpetuating.”

His sister blinks at him, her eyes suddenly bright, and he thinks she’s going to reach over and hug him. And he’ll have to let her, annoying as it is, because…because she’s always done that to him, and he’s always let her, and their putting up with each other has nothing to do with any outsider and he’s not about to let that change now. If nothing else, Stiles’ mother—whatever she is now—is going to understand _that_ about the Hales.

But no, Talia doesn’t. Her hand does rise a little, but then it drops back and she just smiles at Peter. “I thought you actually were fond of his _Dark Tower_ books. You have the whole set, with all those margin notes.”

“Clearly, you weren’t actually reading my notes,” Peter mutters, picking up his candles again. “I only read those because your idiot children seem to think the man did _research_ about the supernatural.”

“Well, you could always write your own. Might be more fun than drafting contracts,” Talia says. She squats for another moment with him, then pushes herself to her feet. She does help herself to his shoulder for that, and let her fingers squeeze it a little longer than strictly necessary, but it’s not so annoying that he has to shrug her off. “All right, Peter. Try and relax, at least for a little bit. It’s just one more thing to do here, and you know how to do it. I’ll make sure everything else happens the way we need it to.”

Peter snorts as he bags up the last of the candles, then gets up to put the other bags back into their rental SUV. “Just keep the flirting in check, would you? The last thing we need are raging hormones opening the door to a possession.”

“She’s not a poltergeist, c’mon, I thought you’d read Von Junzt,” says Stiles. From the doorway. Because at some point, Talia apparently let him in. He blinks a few times, looking back and forth between her and Peter, and then shuffles away from the threshold. “Um, sorry, did I walk in on something? I don’t actually try to eavesdrop all the time, I just, um, I actually…thought you were talking to Laura?”

“Oh, that’s all right, I’m told we sound very alike when we’re arguing with Peter,” says Peter’s treacherous sister, as she smiles and slides between Stiles and the door in such a way that makes Stiles step forward again. “And rest assured, we’ve our eye on the little situation with Parrish.”

Stiles narrows his eyes and opens his mouth, looking after Talia as she departs, but when he finally says something, it’s to Peter. “So…what does that mean, exactly? Because again, it’s not like I’m really actively trying to read minds here, but, um, I kind of can, and what I’m reading is really weird?”

“She’s not going to kill the man,” Peter sighs, resigning himself to getting Talia back later. He sets the last bag in the SUV, then pulls down the back.

“I know, that’s why it’s weird? Because she’s all, I’m _into_ this, and I’m not a parent but I just think if my kid landed in Beacon Hills and got messed around by a—by my demonic mom, and then decided to crush on the resident hellhound, I’d have some questions about judgment at the _very_ least?” Stiles says. He shifts from foot to foot, a large roll of red yarn tucked under one arm, and then his eyes drop to Peter’s bag. They silver a little and his tattoos appear, and then he pulls his head up, looking guilty. “Anyway, it’s not that I’m not grateful Jordan’s not on your to-do list, because he’s a pretty cool guy and we’d like to keep him in one piece.”

“He’s also a hellhound, so I think dismemberment would require a considerable amount of research, at least if it’s going to stick,” Peter says. He locks the SUV and then goes over to Stiles. “These are the candles I mentioned, that’s all.”

“I’m not looking suspiciously at you because you’re the kind of guy who brings corpse-fat candles on vacation with him. I’m looking at you like that because you think I’m gonna be reassured you’re too lazy to look up how to kill Jordan,” Stiles says. Though he still takes a peek into the bag, when Peter proffers the half-zipped side to him. “I mean, are you kidding? You can quote from the _Book of Eibon_ when you’re half-conscious, and you think I’m going to buy that you don’t _already_ know how to do it?”

Peter pauses with one hand out for the jamb, then turns more fully to look at Stiles. Who is amused, and pleased with himself for catching Peter off-guard, and slightly watchful for Peter’s reaction, all at once, and who is—who is interesting. Who is far more interesting than he really has any right to be, or than it makes sense for him to be, and yet…no, Peter can’t reason his way out of this one.

He obviously can’t rely on his sister to do it for him either, despite her constant protests to be just looking out for him. She always thinks she knows exactly what he wants, and she’s…got an annoyingly high percentage of being right.

Stiles frowns as the silence goes on. He starts fidgeting again, and then withdraws his hand from Peter’s bag. “So—”

The timing is bad, but it isn’t about to go away. And Peter never has been one to let self-delusions cripple him. “We’re not going to kill him,” he says. He pauses again, then steps into the house. “Well, Talia and myself, at any rate. I can’t guarantee what my niece might get up to, given her judgment to date. Or Derek’s judgment, but he does seem busy elsewhere.”

“Yeah, I kind of noticed,” Stiles says, hopping in after Peter. He’s so eager to take up the conversation that he follows Peter nearly through the little utility room before realizing he hasn’t shut the garage door behind him. Then he lunges back and does that, and hurries up to Peter again, a bit breathless behind the wary eyes. “I mean, _Scott_ has noticed, and that’s really impressive, because he’s got probably the worst dating record after me, but that’s because I’m sabotaging stuff on purpose so people don’t die, while he keeps thinking people are just wanting to thank him for saving them, and this must all irritate the hell out of you.”

“Well, eventually, when someone calls in a panic on date night because somehow, they’re grown werewolves and they _still_ don’t know what to do with an unexpected body, and of course it’s not like the rest of us have personal lives away from the pack,” Peter says. He’d actually stopped to wait for Stiles, and…yes, he admits. Yes, he likes the way the man’s eyes widen when Stiles realizes that. Yes, he likes the sudden note of optimism in Stiles’ scent, before Stiles remembers to side-eye him. And no, not all of that is just because Stiles’ facial expressions remain hilarious. “But for now, I think I’ll just appreciate the bumbling romantic overtures. There’s no comedy like young, over-wrought love, after all.”

Stiles stops short of Peter, then gives Peter a long, skeptical look. He’s not amused now, and oddly, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with irritation. At least, that’s not how he smells. And as he continues to study Peter, it’s not how his eyes read either.

“I didn’t mean that. I meant…you got away from here,” he finally says. His tone is flat and blank. “Getting attached again has to be the last thing you want.”

“It was,” Peter says. He takes a moment before he does, so that he doesn’t have to once it’s said, and can continue while Stiles is still trying to bury his obvious disappointment. “I didn’t want to come back. But I have, and it’s—”

“Been violent and highly traumatic and reminded you of all the reasons you hated this place?” Stiles says.

“I thought you said you didn’t try to read minds,” Peter says, and then he lets Stiles have his dark little snort. “Well, yes, that happened, but that _happened_. I came back. I didn’t want to, but I did, and I’ve had a terrible time, and frankly, I’m glad you survived, because if you hadn’t, I probably would have burned this entire place by now.”

“Yeah, I know, but one more shitty day and you’ll get to—wait. What?” Stiles blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I’m somewhat less certain about Parrish, or about your friend and that Argent girl, but if they keep my niece and nephew too preoccupied to dig up any more homicidal family history, I could be convinced they’re worth the trouble,” Peter goes on. Someone’s footsteps catch his attention and he cocks his head, but then determines they’re going to swerve before getting to the utility room. “Stiles, I’m not an idiot. I can separate things. This town and its horrors are not the same as certain people living in it.”

“But—but why would you _want_ to?” finally bursts out of Stiles. He’s been jittering up and down on one foot for the entire time Peter’s been talking, looking more and more disbelieving, and now he can’t just talk. His hand darts out and grabs Peter’s wrist, and he drags at Peter, staring wildly into Peter’s eyes. “This place is shitty. I mean, not shitty, I mean like my _mother_ beat a fucking _demon_ and then decided she was just gonna ride that train straight to psychopathic Rockwell territory, and—you have to want to leave. You have to.”

A sharp flash of ice goes through Peter, making him grimace—that’s the wrist the demon marked, the one Stiles has just grabbed. But he doesn’t shake the man off; he can already see Stiles is misreading his wince and that right there, he decides, is the last straw. Because he will not have his damned life dictated by anyone, much less a demonic housewife.

“Stiles, I can want to leave, and still want your phone number,” he says. Stepping into the man’s hold, despite how that sends chilly spikes shooting up towards his elbow. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“You’re just saying that to pep me up,” Stiles says. Staring back at Peter, voice as strained as the tension pulling the planes of his face flat and unemotional. “You don’t have to. We’re gonna deal with her.”

“Wonderful. That should—” the cold in Peter’s arm is starting to throb and he has to set his teeth against it “—free up your calendar for traveling. Because you’re right, I don’t want to be the one visiting.”

“What?” Stiles nearly spits into Peter’s face. He looks at Peter, angry and incredulous at the same time, and the anger in particular comes in so many different shades that it’s a marvel.

Then he suddenly lets Peter go. His tattoos are showing, vivid against his too-pale skin as he stumbles back into the washing machine behind him. Peter reaches out and Stiles smacks at Peter’s arm. Then they both stare at it. Peter because it’s still so numbed that he honestly didn’t feel the blow, and Stiles because he knows that, somehow, and he hates himself and hates Peter for it, with a ferocity that Peter can almost taste. It’s very easy to see right now how Stiles’ mother could have consumed a demon.

And then Stiles slumps against the machine, and suddenly all of that fire is gone. “You have to be kidding me,” he mumbles.

“Do you think I am?” Peter asks.

Stiles’ eyes flick up as if he wishes they wouldn’t. Then drop, and then come up again as Stiles makes an agitated, frustrated noise. “I _wish_ —I wish—I wish you weren’t fucking _hot_.” He flushes, makes as if to slap himself, and just hits the washing machine instead. “I mean—seriously, this isn’t fair. Why couldn’t you just have grown up into an ugly smarmy asshole?”

“Well, I could ask why you couldn’t have just stayed an undersized child who did everything I said,” Peter points out.

“Because…if I had, that’d make all this unresolved sexual tension really gross? Instead of just making me want to stab myself in the face when this is all over?” Stiles says.

He’s more than half serious, despite the comic way he wrings out the words, and Peter feels no urge to mock the man. “Why would you want to do that?” he asks. “You’ll be _done_. You’ll be done and free to do what you like.”

“I know, okay, do you think that hasn’t been my one fucking dream for the last ten years?” Stiles snaps. He shoves himself off the machine, glaring at Peter, and then abruptly falls back against it. Puts his hand up to his face and groans into the palm. “Wow, every time I think my life can’t get more of a mess, I just…it just…”

Peter thinks about saying something. He could come up with any number of comforting platitudes, if he wanted to charm the man, to lull him into a sense of security. He’s quite good at it, and as quick as Stiles has been to spot a verbal trap before, he thinks right now he’d get one past the man. It’s in the rough way that Stiles is breathing, the misery weighing down his scent. But…but he doesn’t want that. It doesn’t have true weight if it’s tricked out that way. So instead he just waits the man out, till Stiles controls his breathing and looks up again with tired eyes.

“We’re seriously flirting here,” Stiles says. His gaze goes to Peter’s arm and Peter just stops himself from shifting it. “Seriously.”

“Well, I was under the impression that was what we were doing,” Peter says. “If that’s not the case, do let me know.”

“Because what, you’re gonna leave me alone? I don’t know, you don’t really seem like that kind of guy, what with talking about murder on date night and all,” Stiles says, still sounding tired. He shifts up against the machine and gives his face one more rub, then peers at Peter through drooping lashes. “I mean, granted, I just know you when somebody’s trying to kill you, so I don’t know if that skews things.”

Peter shrugs. “No, I’m generally like this. I might be a little more subdued right now because I’m still healing, so I can’t be as preemptive as I prefer.”

“Which means date-night murder is annoying just because it’s not premeditated?” Stiles asks.

“Well, isn’t that annoying?” Peter says. “When a little forethought would ensure you’ve an alibi and clean clothes, rather than having to spend the whole night chasing after loose ends?”

Stiles looks at him for a few seconds, smelling amused under the fatigue. Then Stiles makes a face. “Oh, my God, you are like this.”

“So you do agree with me,” Peter says, smiling.

“I—am not gonna comment on that, because my dad is an actual _sheriff_ here, when he’s not busy dealing with Mom, and we have some standards. And yeah, I remember you’re a lawyer, but that just means I know this isn’t covered by attorney-client privilege,” Stiles says. His mouth twitches as if he might smile back, and then he abruptly looks away. He presses his hand against the washing machine as if he’s going to push off it and walk out, and Peter is swallowing his disappointment because he can be _patient_ , when it’s worth it—and then Stiles just looks at him again. “I didn’t actually do everything you said.”

Peter blinks, then makes his own face before he can help it. “Stiles, if this is another story about how I used inappropriate babysitting tactics, I’d like to point out that one, they all ended up working to your benefit, and two—”

“And I’m not gonna give you my number just because you came back and turns out you’re hot,” Stiles goes on. He takes a step away from the machine, but twists so that he’s facing Peter instead of the hallway to the rest of the house. “The whole hotness thing is just distracting, anyway. It’s not going to work when you’re out of town.”

“So you’re going to ignore any photos of myself that I send you? And we shouldn’t live-stream when I’m in the gym?” Peter says.

“I hate you,” Stiles says, blushing. He works his mouth a little, then visibly manages to drag his train of thought back on its rails. “Also, I was trying to say—I’m not giving it to you just in case things go haywire after she—after we’ve laid her to rest, and we can’t trust the phones. We’re going to change everybody’s numbers right after this is done, to make sure.”

“Ah,” Peter manages after a second. “That makes sense.”

Stiles presses his lips together. There was something else, but he isn’t going to say it. He moves and Peter thinks he’s leaving, and not—not _yet_ , not now, not when Peter can feel how they’re balanced on the razor’s edge. Peter wasn’t going to sway the man with cheap ploys, not when he wants this to be anything but cheap, but if it’s the only way—

“You want to give me your address?” Stiles says, looking up at him. Hopefully, Peter thinks. Hopefully, and while it’s not free of exhaustion or doubt or bitterness, at least it’s there. “When it’s all—when it’s all died down, maybe I can come out. God knows Dad and I haven’t had a vacation in years.”

“Yes,” Peter says. “Yes, you could.”

“Okay.” Stiles stands there, looking at him, and they barely know each other, but Peter has never in his life _wanted_ to learn about someone the way he does about this man.

It’s irrational and Peter is fine with that. He gets to make that decision, after all—to make room in his life for it. He hasn’t been brainwashed into thinking it’s the right thing to do, hasn’t been forced to accommodate it—the most he’ll have to put up with is his sister’s unbearable smugness, but he wouldn’t know her without that, honestly. And there’s where Stiles’ mother must have lost her humanity, he thinks. When she thought she could make a family, as if family are just pieces to be slotted together in exactly the right pattern. 

“Well, maybe you should tell me later, actually. I’m not—I’m not backing out, I just have literally so much space in my head and right now it’s all filled with Latin for—” Stiles is saying, and Peter kisses him.

Stiles goes quiet and still. Doesn’t twitch or yelp or indulge in any of the mannerisms that Peter would have expected, but then, he never gets what he expects with the man. No, Stiles just…just leans into it, and after a moment, when the initial tingle of excitement has died down and uncertainty is worming its way in, he puts his hand on Peter’s wrist. Same one as before, but this time Peter’s flesh stays warm as Stiles shifts closer, tilts his head to match better, pulls Peter’s arm around him at the same time he reaches up and slings one arm over Peter’s shoulder.

The kiss breathes then, untwists from the simple press of lips into something greater, something that lives and breathes between them. Fragile, for now, but Peter senses growth there, growth and strength and determination. And when their mouths pull apart, when Stiles sucks the air over his teeth and lets out a ragged little laugh, his forehead pushed into Peter’s cheek as Peter, eyes closed, leans into the curve of his throat—when that happens, it doesn’t die.

“Okay,” Stiles says. He bites his lip; Peter can feel the square edges of Stiles’ teeth against his cheek. “Okay. I—so I’m gonna kill my mom, and then I’ll…I’ll come check you out. That’s a plan, right?”

“Yes,” Peter says. He breathes deeply himself, and has to force himself to not catch at the other man when Stiles pulls back. “If I—”

“I’m gonna kill her. I have to, you know. She’s my mom,” Stiles says, eyes clear. He looks Peter over, then offers up a thin, wry smile. “It’s nice of you to offer, but…yeah. I’ll do it.”

Technically, Peter still hasn’t. The words never actually formed in his mouth, whatever Stiles’ powers are reading off him. And technicalities are completely pointless. “We’ll deal with our family,” is all Peter can say, wishing he had a thousand corpses to offer instead.

“Yeah, I know.” Stiles smiles at him like the man is seeing that thought, and like it’s the most charming idea in the world. Then Stiles steps back, still smiling. “Hey, so—I’ll see you later.”

“Yes,” Peter says. “Yes, you will.”

* * *

First, of course, Peter has to deal with his family, and by that, he means the living members. Because even though it’s the long-dead first Hale pack that is still tying them to this town, it’s his immediate family who seem dead set on keeping them here.

“What are you talking about, I am _literally_ holding a shovel right now,” Derek protests as they walk out of the preserve parking lot.

“Yes, and you’re also watching _Indiana Jones_ on your phone,” Peter says. “I don’t know whether that’s for tips about dealing with the supernatural, which—”

“No, I know that’s not—it’s a movie, Peter, I know they never get that stuff right,” Derek snaps, shoving his phone back into his pocket. The movement makes the shovel under his arm swing erratically and Laura jumps back from the blade, then curses as she _oofs_ into Scott. Derek glances over his shoulder, then glares at her while nearly smacking the shovel into Peter’s bag. “I was checking out how they dig out a heart, okay? In case we get the same undead zombie thing as when Allison and I dug up great-grandaunt Juliette’s grave.”

Laura trots back up, oblivious to either Derek’s glare or the embarrassed way Scott just grabs onto Derek’s shovel to prevent further swings. “Oh, no, you want _Temple of Doom_ for that, not _Raiders of the Lost Ark._ ”

Derek looks at her again. “What? Oh—”

“Honey, if anybody needs to rip out a heart, Peter or I will do it, all right?” Talia says, calmly reaching over and pulling Derek’s hand away from his pocket. “Don’t worry about figuring out how to do it.”

“Dear God, please don’t bother,” Peter finally manages to say. “Because—”

Talia leans past Derek and gives Peter a pointed look, because for some reason, she thinks that raising her children in suburbia is an insurmountable barrier to properly educating them. Well, if she wants to let them continue through life completely oblivious to basic anatomy—which even non-werewolves _occasionally_ find useful to know—then she can have that on her head. She’d just better not expect him to answer the phone every time they need somebody with actual butchering skills outside of regular business hours.

“Or I could do it,” Scott says. When they turn and look at him, he completely misreads their expression and gives them a self-deprecating smile. “I mean, if you don’t mind. I know werewolves don’t really like each other messing with a kill, but I’d just—I could just crack a sternum for you, or something. If this doesn’t come up a lot for you.”

“And this…does?” Laura says, blinking. “Ripping out hearts?”

“It doesn’t for you?” Allison says, looking just as surprised as Scott. “Don’t you go hunting?”

“For people?” Derek says. “We don’t eat people.”

Visibly flustered, Allison makes pointless adjustments to the gun case she’s got slung on her back. “Oh, no, I know, I didn’t mean—sorry, I just meant like deer, or wild boar, or something like that. You have to gut those, and it’s not like finding the heart is that different…”

“Well, we don’t do that ourselves, that’d be way too messy and serial-killerish. I mean, what, we’re gonna do that in our garage on the same floor that Derek spills antifreeze on every winter?” Laura says slowly, while her brother tries to glare her into silence. It’d be more effective if it wasn’t patently clear that Derek doesn’t actually have an alternative response to offer. “That’s what the butcher’s for. We just drive it over and then pick it up in a couple hours. What, do you actually do it yourself out here?”

“Um, no, we don’t really—I don’t hunt for food. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just don’t really like the taste of deer,” Scott says. He glances at Allison, who still seems as confused as he smells, then shrugs awkwardly. “We just get a lot of—there are a lot of monsters where you can only kill them by taking out the heart. I don’t—I don’t usually eat them either. I was just in a hurry, and couldn’t let go of her long enough to use my hands.”

“So you’ve had practice at this,” Talia says. She waits just long enough for Scott to wince and Derek to start to look worried, then gives Scott a brisk nod. “Well, I don’t think they would have tried the kind of curse they put on Juliette, since these were buried under the house. You don’t want to risk that where you raise your children. But all the same, it’s good that you’ll know what to do. I have a feeling once this starts, it’s going to go very quickly.”

Allison clears her throat, then lifts her hand to show them the GPS-positioning app on her phone. “We’re just about here, too.”

Peter pulls himself up sharply enough to send a swirl of dead pine needles into the air. Then he takes a closer look at the screen and realizes she’s smartly called them off while they’re still a few feet short, and does his best to hide his grimace. Derek and Laura are already staring, and for all the idiotic ideas about who constitutes a reliable authority on bodily dissection, they’re nervous. They’re nervous, and so is Talia, though she keeps her tells to just the way she positions herself to loom over Allison’s shoulder, rather than coming around to look at the woman’s phone the other way.

Frankly, Peter is nervous too. He isn’t ashamed about it, considering what they’re facing, but he’s certainly not going to lean into his nerves. They have far too much to do, and far too little time for doing it, and he can’t afford to wonder what’s going on elsewhere.

Especially as he’s the only real magic-worker in their group: Lydia apparently is one too, but she went with the Stilinskis and Morrell, and not just because her absurd level of entitlement around Stiles will mean she’s motivated to keep an eye on Morrell. It’s just after dawn, when the demon should be at its weakest, and they’re betting on it also wanting to focus most of its attention on Stiles and his father. Their group really shouldn’t face much that brute force can’t handle. 

But if that doesn’t work, and the demon does come after them…Peter pushes the doubts out of his mind, and takes a spool of red string out of his bag. They’ve all donned bracelets of the stuff, but that won’t be enough to keep the illusions away, not when it only takes a moment’s lack of thought to separate them.

So to protect against that, he chalks a tree with protective symbols and then wraps several loops of the yarn around it. Then, once Allison and Talia have decided they’re ready to proceed into the heart of the demon’s grounds, he lets the yarn spool out behind him as they walk.

Peter has gone through two spools by the time their old house comes into view. It’s been quiet, and aside from the odd aural hallucination, relatively demon-free, but the conversation died at the first stop and never revived. The audible conversation, at any rate—he mostly ignores the little looks and hand-gestures and occasional elbow-touches going on between Scott and Allison and Derek. Laura tries for a while to get him interested in it, and then, when he clearly doesn’t care, her mother. But Talia’s in no mood to be distracted either, and eventually Laura abandons her attempts.

It might have been better to send her along with the other group, Peter muses. Parrish went with them as their sole fighter; he and Lydia are both immune to the demon’s ability to drain life, but he’s the only one who could physically tackle it long enough to toss somebody clear, as he put it. Laura doesn’t have immunity, but as an alpha, she would take longer to put down, and it’s asking a lot to think Parrish can pull both Stiles and his father to safety.

“There,” Talia says lowly, interrupting Peter’s thoughts. She glances at him, then reaches out and takes loose hold of his arm as he comes up next to her, looking down at their house. “You know—”

“You know we’re not supposed to think about our fears,” Peter reminds her.

She favors him with another look, then huffs out a breath, rolling her shoulders and turning away from him. “All right,” she says. Quiet, but it’s enough to draw the rest of them around her in a semi-circle. Even the McCall boy looks at her, as he should. “We all know what we’re looking for, so I’m not going to go over that again. Just remember—just keep in mind, what’s down there has nothing to do with our lives. _We_ make who we are, and nothing and nobody else is going to interfere with that. Nothing you might see will change that.”

Might as well tell them all to think about how insecure they are, Peter almost says. Almost, because when he looks around, he actually sees determined, focused faces. Incredibly enough, her little speech seems to be working.

“Also, sooner we get through this, the better,” Talia adds, wrinkling her nose a little. She arches her shoulders again, making the bones pop. “They’re dead, they honestly don’t care. Just get it done.”

Nods all around, and then Peter hands over the latest spool to Laura and the four younger members of their group promptly head down the hill to the house, each with a hand sliding along the yarn. Derek’s mimicking his mother by cracking his neck, which for some ridiculous reason seems to be impressive to Scott. Laura and Allison, at least, are doing something useful and dividing up the digging tools.

And Talia is hanging back, looking at Peter as if she thinks he’s the one being absurd. “You say what you have to say,” she tells him, with a little shrug.

“Well, yes, but…oh, never mind.” He can respect the effect, if not the delivery, and he’s certainly not going to weaken their group just for the sake of personal cynicism. “Suppose that’s why you’re the alpha.”

“It does free you up to handle all of that, if I do all the pretty speeches,” she says, with a jerk of her chin towards the red yarn he’s fingering. She puts her own hand on it, just behind his, and then reaches over it with her other hand to take the bag off his shoulder. Then she holds it out so that he can retrieve and light one of the candles he’d brought. “Don’t fuck it up, Peter. You’ll hate yourself and go insane and try to kill all the survivors out of sheer frustration, and then probably forget how to be smart about it and someone like Scott could take you out.”

A little wax wobbles off the candle and Peter bites down on his lip. Steadies the candle, without dropping any more wax, and then he glares at his sister. “You don’t _need_ to give me a speech.”

“No, I don’t need to,” Talia says, tone light, but she’s watching him. 

He ignores her. They walk down the hill a couple yards behind the others. The air around them grows palpably thicker, as if they’re walking through a fog that they can’t actually see, and the light…the light varies. It never grows _dark_ , not the way they’ve all experienced over the past few days, but it still feels unnatural. Dawn should be pushing onwards, growing in power, but instead they’re frozen in a lifeless grey hour that seems to suck out all the energy.

Peter starts chanting under his breath, and as the string in his hand pulses, he sees Derek jump in place. Laura grabs Derek’s hand and slaps it back on the yarn before Derek’s fully released it, then shivers visibly as she stares up at the old house. They’re nearly to the back porch—the entrance closest to the kitchen—and Peter can pinpoint the exact moment when she locks up.

“Got it,” Scott says, taking the spool from her. He speaks under his breath, but the air is so still that most of them wince at the sound of his voice, including him. 

Credit to him, he may move slowly but he never actually hesitates to step up onto the porch, loop the yarn once around one of the posts, and then continue to the back door. Derek’s right behind him, and then Laura, with Allison last as she holds tightly onto the still unlit candle that Peter had given her.

“Don’t fuck it up,” Talia mutters, just as Scott and Derek smash in the door.

Peter looks irritably at her, but her eyes are on the house—on something in it. He can’t see anything, but he can see her pupils moving to track something she sees. He swallows back the urge to hiss at her, and instead launches into a fresh round of chanting.

Talia glances over without turning her head, letting him know she was never fully ensnared, and then rolls her shoulders one last time. And then she is the Hale alpha, not his sister—he can see that coming down over her, flowing through the set of her head and the jut of her shoulders, settling into the flex of her muscles as she steps up onto the porch. She’s the alpha, and she’s about to deal with the threat against their pack.

And yet, when he steps up after her, she lets out a short little exhale. She didn’t need him to do that, any more than he needed her to needle him out of his nerves, but that’s what they are to each other, and alpha and beta have nothing to do with it. That’s _blood_.

That’s why, no matter what the demon’s tried over the last fourteen years, it couldn’t do a damn thing till they came back to town. They’re stronger, Peter thinks. They didn’t want to be involved, but—they’re stronger. That’s what it all says. They’re stronger.

Talia goes inside. Peter can already hear stones being cracked and moved, and Derek growling on the exhale, like he tends to do when he’s nervous and doesn’t want to show it. There’s a cut-off exclamation from Allison, and then the noises assume a more ordered intensity, as if they’ve worked through the initial frenzied attack and have remembered there is an actual plan to how they’re working through the layers. Which means, he hopes, that they’re running into the layers they thought they’d find.

When Talia joins in, the noises grow louder. The atmosphere outside also grows tenser. It’s still not getting dark, but somehow, Peter keeps thinking it should be, and keeps glancing over the rail to see whether it is. Then the flame on his candle nearly goes out as the wind picks up, almost making him drop the string to shield it with his hand. Almost.

Peter puts a bit of snarl into his next chant, twisting his body around to shelter the candle. Then, bracing himself, he steps into the house.

It’s the same kitchen he saw at the very end of his time with Stiles’ mother: burnt and wrecked. Except—when he doesn’t concentrate, when he lets the edges of his vision go, glimpses of somewhere else try to push in. He can’t afford to trance, not without leaving himself vulnerable to possession, so he has to keep his eyes moving and he does that by tracking who’s taking a turn at shoveling the rubble out of the hole in the floor. 

“Think I—” Scott says, just as the clinking noises in the hole suddenly sharpens. He hands his shovel over to Derek and then jumps down into the hole.

“Wait, Scott,” Allison says. Halfway through she’s already blowing her breath out in frustration.

She calms down when Talia gestures to her, first frowning and then understanding, and shifting over so that she, Laura, and Talia are each covering one side of the hole. Derek grimaces and sinks down on the last remaining side, the old iron key sticking out of his white-knuckled fist.

“I don’t think anything’s going to leap out,” Talia tells everyone.

Her son starts, gives her a skeptical look, and then quickly looks back down into the hole as Scott rummages around in it, grunting and heaving at something. The hole is far too narrow for anyone else to get in there, but as Scott gets leverage on something, Talia leans down with a shovel and starts to twist and turn at the handle as if it were a screwdriver.

Peter leans against the doorway, making sure that stays open, and keeps one eye on the climate outside of the house. He can hear things from time to time—voices. Sometimes they’re just eerie echoes of their own voices, as if someone were repeating what was said with a darker, vicious twist to it, but sometimes they’re clearly strangers. He doesn’t want to listen any more closely than that, in case the demon manages to slip something by his defenses, but he can’t help recognizing—recognizing that he _doesn’t_ recognize the voices. And demons aren’t creators, can’t come up with anyone that didn’t exist to begin with, so at some point…so many people have died in this house. He remembers all the names he saw in his research.

“The lock,” Scott says suddenly, as the top of his head fully disappears into the hole. “I’ve got it, I’ve got—”

“Get it up here and we’ll open it,” Talia orders, and at the same time she thrusts her arm out and grabs Derek’s wrist before he can hand down the key. “We’ll burn them up here.”

Scott straightens up and looks over the edge of the hole and his and Talia’s eyes meet, and then everything—changes—

It’s not the demon, Peter thinks, wheeling around, red string pulling tight where he’s twisted it around his wrist. The demon wants a home, a family. She wants _people_ , wants their lives even as she takes them. But this—this isn’t about people.

He’s standing in a forest like he’s never seen. The trees are immense, cathedral-like in their girth and height and most of all in the pure smell of them, unadulterated by any hint of oil or metal or plastic. It almost burns his lungs, how intense the _freshness_ of them are. And the ground under his feet, it’s the same, earthier than anything he’d ever turn up in a garden store. Because this is the past, he instinctively understands. The very, very old past, before towns and roads, when wilderness was truly that, and not merely untended land.

The house is not there. It hasn’t been built yet. And as he thinks that, and turns back, a great grey wolf rises up and looks at him.

Alpha. Alpha, even though her eyes haven’t reddened yet. Alpha and just standing there, tail relaxed and hanging slightly to the side, no teeth showing, she draws Peter’s head down in acknowledgment.

She. Peter frowns, looking up again, and then breathes in deeply. “Blood,” he murmurs.

The alpha cocks her head. Then she moves sideways about a yard, one forepaw absently testing the ground. She looks at him again, lifting her head slightly, and then she backs up. It isn’t a retreat, not with the way that the muscles in her shoulders bunch, and Peter just catches himself before he drops down.

“We’re blood,” he says. He twists his wrist against the string, then forces himself to loosen his hold on it before it snaps. He’s at a disadvantage with one hand tied up—well, she’s an alpha, he’d be at a disadvantage anyway. “We’re family. We’re—you should know that, you should be able to see that. I’m your—”

Her eyes redden. She splays her forelegs slightly, bracing her weight back on her haunches, and even as he puts his hand out, her upper lip starts to curl away from her fangs.

“You’re dead!” Peter snaps, suddenly angry. Of all the—of all the things this town has thrown at him, and not just recently but from before they’d left, it’s always come back to his damned family. Always. And damn it, but that was the _one_ thing he’d thought had changed for the better—the one change he’d thought couldn’t be undone. “You’re dead, and you aren’t alpha, and—it’s not up to you! It’s never been! You’re dead!”

The alpha never actually snarls at him. She charges first.

It’s explosive, the way she barrels at him, and Peter’s falling backward, stumbling when he should be leaping. He just—he can’t handle her, he knows that. She’s too much. She will take him down and grind his face into the dirt and she won’t even think twice about it.

He panics. He should be better than that, but this place—he goes down and then, far too late, tries to roll himself away. Something burns across the inside of his wrist, a thin fiery lace, and he realizes he’s losing the string. He went the wrong way on top of it and he swears and scrabbles for the yarn as she bears down on him, because he has to keep anchored. She’s going to tear him to pieces but better that than losing his way in this place, better that he at least gets dragged out dead than trapped here in a place he never even wanted—

“—go, you have to go—”

The words almost whip past Peter’s ears, but for the sheer raggedness of them. Whoever’s shouting, they sound as if their heart is being sliced out. And then they scream, just as his palm slaps against the yarn, just as the alpha’s teeth and claws should be burying themselves in his flesh, and…

He’s unharmed. Clutching at the string, and sitting up, and just yards from him, Stiles is on his knees clutching a tattered book as if it’s holding him to the bottom of the sea. He doesn’t see Peter. He’s crying too hard, his shoulders shaking, head bent so far that Peter can almost see the vertebrae standing out from the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but you’re dead. You’re dead, Mom, you have to go, you can’t—you can’t—we don’t want you anymore!” Stiles shouts, and then he nearly throws himself headfirst into the ground as he loses his grip on the book. “We don’t—we don’t. You’re dead, we can’t—we don’t—”

This isn’t the right place either, Peter knows. He shouldn’t be there. It isn’t his family, it’s not his fight, and while he might have a preference for a winner, he knows it’s not up to him. And yet, with a viciousness that shouldn’t surprise him at this point, he wishes it was. 

It’s not that he’s infatuated with the other man. It’s been too short a time for that, with too much else going on that’s mixing adrenaline and hasty ideas in his head. But it’s the…the possibility. The chance that actually, he might have missed something when he was living in Beacon Hills, and that having come back, he might not be entirely wasting his time with death and violence and all the things that had driven him away in the first place. The chance that he might want something, someone _here_ , in a town that he’s done his best to forget. No, not just forget, but erase completely from his life.

But that’s what’s wrong. _That’s_ what he missed. He’s been pretending, just like Stiles’ mother, and that’s why he never really did put this place behind him. And till he does, he suddenly understands, he never will have a chance. Because if he can’t let the old Beacon Hills go, he’ll never be able to walk free of it. Never be able to really see what it is now, and what and who he is, completely free of it.

Stiles has the book clawed back into his lap, but—but it’s not right. Something about it makes the hair on Peter’s arms stand on end, even before he sees the way that the air is swirling around the other man. Thickening, darkening, shaping itself into a shadow that is reaching around from behind, with arms that _aren’t_ embracing Stiles. No, they’re using that as an excuse, but their real goal is the book in Stiles’ hands. Which Stiles isn’t holding right. His hands—his hands are gripping its top, so tightly that the pages are denting under them, and they’re pulling at it. Not holding, pulling, as if he means to tear the book apart.

He can’t do that, Peter intuitively understands. If the book goes, so does everything else. But Stiles is so upset that he hasn’t noticed; he’s still crying and shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I know, I miss you—I miss you so much, I thought—I know I shouldn’t, but I do, and—Mom, I’m so sorry.”

The shadow trying to wrap around him gets denser, and the thin fluttering edges stretching down Stiles’ arms start to graze the edges of the book. Peter jerks forward and the shadow shortens itself in response. Stiles doesn’t respond—Stiles doesn’t see him. But the shadow—the demon does.

“I wish we could have you back,” Stiles says, shoulders hitching, and the shadow grows so dark that Peter can barely see Stiles through it. “I wish—”

“No,” Peter says, and then shakes himself. If Stiles can’t see him, then the man can’t hear him—but he can’t stand here. Where the hell is Morrell, or Lydia? Or Stiles’ father? Why aren’t any of them interrupting this? “No, Stiles—”

“I wish you hadn’t—you hadn’t g—you weren’t—” Stiles is saying. Going to say. _Gone_ , he’s going to say. _I wish you weren’t gone._

“No!” Peter shouts. He takes another step forward and then is pulled up short because—because of the yarn.

He stares at it. Then, gritting his teeth, he yanks up about a yard of it—as much as he can before it gets too taut. Before he thinks he feels a pull at the other end, as if he’ll be reeled in—but he has to get through to Stiles first, and he’ll do that quicker here than back in reality. So what he can get of the string, he pins to his chest and then slashes through, making sure to catch his wrist.

The bloodied string snaps apart. Peter twists around before he can see where the one end goes, if it disappears or not—he doesn’t have time. He’s already flinging the fragment he still has at Stiles, hoping that it’s long enough to reach—he throws himself forward to gain the extra feet. A fierce wind instantly blows up around him, strong enough to slow his fall, but he’s gotten enough blood on the yarn and it continues to fall. Too slowly, he thinks, too slow, it won’t go far enough—

And then Stiles looks up.

He starts and Peter can see the silver retreating from his wide eyes. He’s looking at the end of the yarn as it arcs towards him and at first he doesn’t understand what it is. Peter can see that in his face. But then…then he starts again, yanking the book close to him, and scrambles to his feet. “No— _no_ , Mom,” he says. He’s still teary-eyed but he can see, Peter thinks. “No. No, I’m sorry, but you’re—but _we’re_ not coming back. We’re going, Mom. So you can’t stay. You’re—you’re dead, and this is—”

Suddenly Peter hears other voices. Female voices, raw and loud, and then a male voice—Stiles’ father, sounding just as grief-stricken as Stiles.

“We’re saying bye, Mom,” Stiles says. He nearly can’t finish the sentence, his voice cracks so badly, but he forces out the words and then takes a gulp of air. And then he straightens up, holding the book, and his voice and his father’s voice ring out together: “We lay you to rest, for all eternity, and may you be at peace.”

The wind drops. It’s light again. No shadows, even as Stiles breaks down immediately and buries his face in the book’s pages. No shadows, no darkness, and no—

Hot breath on the side of Peter’s head and the sudden down-pressure of a crushing weight overhead, and he twists and even as he twists he knows he’ll be too late, he’ll be dead before he hits the ground, and then the alpha is slammed away from him.

Peter lands on one elbow and his knees, and immediately rolls over, then flips around to see his sister in full-shift atop the Hale alpha. The other Hale—he’s not going to bother trying to figure out the semantics here, all he knows is that she’s winning. 

Talia rips up her head to show a muzzle stained with blood, then pivots off as the other alpha bucks viciously. She sees him and lunges his way, nearly knocking him down again when he’s barely up, and then whirls around as he seizes the nearest handful of fur. Then she jumps again, and Peter has the barest sense of the air whooshing about them turning a little strange before they’re suddenly back in the old house.

“You idiot,” Talia spits out, shifting immediately human. Loops of red yarn fall off her arm as she shakes herself. “What do you always say about counting on alpha heroics?”

Probably something along the lines of that never working out unless you’re a hunter, or another alpha, or a druid. Peter’s commented on that topic far too many times over the years to narrow it down without more detail, but before he can point that out, Laura’s scream makes them both whip around. The other alpha—the other alpha is _there_. At the other end of the kitchen, rising up onto its hindlegs, its body bulking out until its head is pressed against the ceiling. 

“Outside! You have to get outside!” Laura shouts.

“The bones are out, we need to burn them!” Derek yells. 

They and Scott and Allison are on the other side of the alpha, with a clear path to the door, though none of them are going for it. Talia and Peter are on the side with the hole, and Peter can see—in the one glance he can make before a mock-lunge by the alpha drags his eyes back—an overturned metal chest with bones tumbling out of it and across the floor, all the way up to the alpha’s feet.

Peter doesn’t have his candle any more. He must have lost it in the other—he lets Talia slide in front of him and digs frantically in his pockets for his lighter, but can’t find that either. “Well, then set them on fire!” he snarls.

“But what about—” Laura starts.

Scott attempts to leap onto the alpha’s back, but before he’s even halfway across the space, the alpha’s spun around to confront him. Peter glimpses his wide eyes as he makes a belated effort to avoid being mauled, which won’t work. 

Or it wouldn’t have, if Talia, full-shifted again, hadn’t been watching for the opportunity and had plowed forward at exactly the same time. She collides with the alpha’s legs, with Peter getting in a quick punch directly after her, and together they knock the alpha off-course just enough that when Scott lands in the corner, it’s with blood running over his side instead of entrails. 

Talia keeps on charging forward and Peter stays right behind her. At the doorway, Laura grabs Derek and drags him back out onto the porch. Then she reappears in time to yank Allison out by the arm, a bare second before Peter would have had to very regretfully run her over. “Scott’s out,” Laura snaps, as the crashing of a broken window cuts across both her words and Allison’s half-voiced protest. “He’s out, he’s out, come on, come on!”

Talia still has to shift human and pick Allison up and toss her off the porch in order to make room for the rest of them. Peter’s last out the door and he pivots on his heel as he goes, sensing a dangerous vacuum at his back. And rightly so, as the alpha’s claws almost take off his nose.

He drops and breaks to the left, while Talia swings right. The floorboards of the porch are already half-wrenched out of place and he stoops to seize one, his feet skidding a little. Then rips it up as soon as his balance allows and throws it at the alpha. It slaps the board out of the way but he was just trying to buy time so that Talia could drive at—Talia jerks herself short, widening eyes catching Peter’s as something sails just past her face into the alpha’s mouth. And then the alpha bursts into flames.

The whole house does, in fact. It seems to start everywhere at once and Peter’s got burned soles by the time he dives at his sister and lets his weight throw them both off the porch, to the not-yet-burning ground. Talia’s hair is singed and she has a small burst of flames on her elbow, which Peter slaps at reflexively before she takes his shoulder and hauls him further from their house.

“What the _hell_ ,” Derek pants.

Peter turns and sees him, on one knee and staring at the house with the kind of expression he usually saves for asking Peter why getting rid of an unplanned corpse has to be so difficult. Then Peter turns back to the house, and decides Derek’s expression is justified.

The alpha is there, standing on the porch and looking back at them. It still hasn’t shifted human, but it doesn’t need to for Peter to read the fury in its eyes. Flames are roaring up all around it, so high that Peter thinks the darkness will end up falling again just from the sheer amount of smoke in the air, and that baleful look is still by far the fieriest thing in the house. And then—

And then it’s gone. It, and the house, and…and everything, except for a huge greyish score across the ground. Ash and cinders. But it’s ash and cinders that have been there for years, and that have had the time to sit there, undisturbed save for the elements, and to wear and fade away.

“Don’t come any closer,” Allison suddenly says, accompanied by metallic clicks.

When Peter looks at her, he finds her holding a gun on…Kali, who’s standing at the edge of the clearing, with what looks like a homemade rocket launcher in hand. Scott starts forward, exclaiming, and Derek grabs his arm. He pauses, then looks back at Kali while putting out his free hand to block Allison’s shot.

“Jordan said he lost that down a sewer,” Scott says.

Kali shrugs. “Guess that must have been it,” she says, lowering the launcher.

She deliberately turns away from all of them as she sets the metal tube against the nearest tree. Laura growls and the sound of it reaches across the clearing, as is clear from the way Kali stiffens. But the woman still doesn’t look back, and in fact, she makes a point of scraping up a flurry of dead leaves as she turns and walks away from them.

“She could’ve hit Mom,” Laura snaps.

“Scott, you don’t _owe_ her,” Allison is hissing at the same time, yanking Scott’s arm out of the way. “I don’t even know why you—”

“There’s somebody else,” Talia says. Derek’s given her his coat, and she finishes zipping it up before she gets up. She takes her time climbing to her feet, letting them all look at her, and reaches back to hook her hand under Peter’s elbow and pull him up too. Then she nods at the woods. “I don’t think they’re awake?”

Allison frowns and turns around. She looks at the pale, slightly-moving blob lying in the brush, and then her heartbeat jumps so violently that at first, Peter mistakes it for cardiac arrest. He’s not the only one: both Scott and Derek whip around towards her, and Scott’s dropping an arm around her waist when she suddenly cries out and races forward.

Her gun stays behind. Rather forcibly, so it’s a damn good thing they’re all werewolves. Once they’ve all unrolled from their crouches and confirmed the bullet didn’t actually _hit_ anyone, Scott gingerly takes possession of the gun. “I think—I think that’s her father?” he says, looking shaky.

“I don’t think…” Derek uncharacteristically looks reluctant to deliver the bad news “…I think that’s it. I mean…”

“No. No, I didn’t think…we found her body,” Scott says quietly. He’s staring at Allison, who’s crouched over in the bushes, and he smells genuinely free of resentment. His face, however, still says he’d rather be somewhere else right now. “She’s…she’s like Stiles’ mom is now, I guess. I mean, she never would have wanted it like— _oh_ , we should see if it worked!”

Well, clearly, it did, if the house is gone. And for the record, Peter doesn’t always feel the need to point out the obvious, and even before Scott spins around and starts talking about running back to the car and getting his phone, he doesn’t need the elbow in his ribs to let Scott have his change of subject. He’s not _that_ psychotic, thank you very much.

“We should see what shape the Stilinskis are in,” Talia says when he glares at her. She tucks her arm through his and starts pulling him along as they all start to leave the clearing. “It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park on our end, and God knows what it ended up taking on theirs.”

“I know that,” Peter says after a second.

“Of course you do, and of course you hate me for reminding you of how much you wish you’d gotten to really murder somebody for putting us all through this,” Talia goes on cheerfully. “But we’re going to let Kali go, Peter.”

Peter stares at her. Then checks on the others—Derek’s gone to help Allison, Scott and Laura are talking about a shortcut through the woods, now that it’s safe to travel through it—before yanking on his sister’s arm so that he can hiss directly in her ear. “Are you insane? Or just too tired? Because let me assure you, _I’ve_ still got enough energy to deal with the woman who showed up just in time to nearly _firebomb_ us—”

“I didn’t miss how she didn’t really mind if we got out of the way or not, either.” Talia’s tone stays calm. In fact, it drops in volume, sounding almost intimate. “But what’s more satisfying, Peter? Taking her down when she’s an omega avenging her pack, which I honestly can’t fault, or doing it when she’s come back with some idiotic idea about taking out her poor life choices on others? You might actually come out of it a true hero.”

She is terrible. And, honestly, terrifying. “Spare me,” Peter finally manages.

“Well, spare me the silly self-sacrifices next time. Or at least give me more of a warning than just a piece of red string,” Talia says, twisting to look at him, and she is truly upset. Her fingers are trembling against his arm. “You’re my brother, I _count_ on you to be the one person in this damn family who doesn’t pull that sort of bullshit.”

Peter starts to tell her what he saw—and then doesn’t. She knows him well enough, he decides.

She knows. She doesn’t particularly enjoy knowing, says her eyes, but the rest of her face softens around them. Talia looks away, and walks for a few paces with him. Then, sighing, she unwinds her arm from his.

“All I’ve ever wanted is for us to have what we want—what we really want, and not what people think we should want,” she says to him. “Whether it was here, or back east, or…”

“Well, _you’re_ alpha, I can hardly disagree,” Peter says.

Talia smiles at him. And then reaches over and gives him a little push on the arm. “Go. You want to. I’ll handle things here, you go.”

* * *

When Peter arrives, Stiles is sitting on the curb, his arms wrapped around his knees. The others are nearby—their heartbeats are within hearing range—but Peter can’t see them, and they don’t appear to be talking.

“Dad’s just…having a moment with her grave. I did most of the talking so I think he just—he just wants a couple words. Lydia and Jordan are watching just in case we have one of those mid-credit sequel-bait scenes,” Stiles says without looking up. “I have no idea where Morrell got to. Literally, if she’s taking over the town right now, I’m just gonna take a nap.”

Stiles looks exhausted. No, that’s not correct—he’s looked exhausted since Peter returned to Beacon Hills, and what he looks now is as far beyond that as…as his mother would be to the common poltergeist. When he raises his head, his eyes are so washed-out that it takes Peter a second to realize they aren’t actually silvered-over.

Then he frowns. “Are you _always_ shirtless?”

“I believe I was clothed when we first met. Both times,” Peter points out.

“You smell sort of—was there a fire?” Stiles says, blinking. His voice had been flat, and it’s still deeply worn-out, but it’s starting to rise.

“I’m fine,” Peter says. Then, as Stiles keeps staring, he sighs and spreads his arms to show the lack of injuries. “Nothing that couldn’t heal on the way over. When you’ve had your nap, we should talk about people who might take over your town, but that can wait—and as for the shirt, Allison’s father was returned alive. We gave him the clothes we could spare, and what was left wasn’t really in decent shape.”

“Oh, really? Oh, shit, Scott was with you—I hope he’s okay, seeing that. I…okay.” Stiles perks up, panics, and then wobbles dangerously enough that he abandons his attempt to rise from the curb. He sinks back, reaching for his pocket, and then huffs out a breath, shaking his head. “Okay, I’m just not…you wouldn’t look so okay with my babbling if somebody died, right? I mean, aside from—you know, the people we were trying to make die. Make deader. Re-dead them. Something like that.”

“I don’t think anyone expects you to reinvent English grammar right now,” Peter says.

Stiles snorts. It’s a little too violent to be reassuring, even if he’s smiling, and he seems to know that, from the way he waves one hand at Peter. “Okay, you know, it’s all over, you don’t have to be—to be so—I don’t have to like you now. We don’t have to like each other.”

“No,” Peter says. “No, you don’t. We don’t.”

Stiles jerks his head back up, but he’s not angry. Or scared, or even wary—he simply gives Peter a long, careful once-over, as if he has a list of things to observe and once he’s observed them, is quietly slotting them in order. And when he’s done, he…shifts a few inches along the curb.

Peter decides to take it for the invitation it is and twists himself around to take a seat next to Stiles. When he groans, it’s not for effect—the blush it sparks in Stiles’ cheeks is an entirely unexpected delight—but a product of very real relief. He wouldn’t mind a lengthy nap of his own, preferably somewhere that’s fully equipped with all modern conveniences except for telecommunications equipment.

They sit together for a few minutes. Somewhere behind them, Peter hears the voice of Stiles’ father, but the man is talking to someone else and Peter doesn’t particularly want to listen hard enough to figure out who, or what’s being said.

“Hey,” Stiles says. He shrugs off his flannel shirt, leaving him in just a baggy tee, and holds it out. He’s a little tense, and isn’t holding the shirt quite far enough for it to be a clear offer. “So, you know, like I said, I was the designated werewolf fact-checker.”

“We don’t impose our habits on the ignorant,” Peter says, sighing. “It doesn’t have to mean what you think it does.”

“Um. I…may want to unpack that later?” Stiles says, blinking again. He absently wraps the shirt around his hand, then twists his wrist to let it unravel. “Because I’m not really sure—but we’ve had werewolves say we started it over some really weird things, like once Scott accidentally cut in line and he was just tired from patrol, he honestly didn’t see the line and I just meant once I figured out you were a werewolf, that thing you told me about night-monster-guard being an actual real job title in your family, because—”

Peter takes the shirt. Pauses, and when Stiles just puts his hand down, he pulls on over his shoulders. It’s large enough that it’s only a little tight on him, and if he doesn’t cross his arms in front of him, it should do. “Stiles, we have to find something else to talk about. It’s all very charming, this little obsession of yours, but it’s been fourteen years. Surely you’d like new material.”

“Okay, one, this is clearly new material to you, or else you wouldn’t be so touchy about it, and two, I actually thought that was a serious cultural thing, like I watched tons of documentaries about wolves guarding the den to figure it out, and now you’ve ruined all my theories,” Stiles says. Sounding irritated, smelling amused, and once Peter’s gotten the shirt on, he leans his shoulder into Peter’s arm. Just a brush at first, and then full weight when Peter adjusts to accommodate him. “Three—three, fine, let’s do this. So werewolf manners, this is a thing? A hierarchy thing? Like if the wrong person serves themselves first from the buffet, you fight it out right then and there?”

“I think what we should do is you should take that nap you mentioned,” Peter says dryly, as Stiles yawns multiple times and still manages to plow through his questions. He moves his arm so he can brace his hand on the grass behind him, and then pretends he doesn’t notice when Stiles’ shoulder pressing against him turns into Stiles’ head. “We can fact-check the nature films later.”

“But I’m interested now,” Stiles mumbles. He resettles his head, then slumps with slightly alarming speed when Peter slides an arm about him. “Besides, you’re a crappy babysitter. ‘m take a nap with you?”

Peter frowns. “Actually, I kept you alive, didn’t I?”

“Well, that’s really kind of baseline, you know. Real differentiation’s in the customer satisfaction, you know, like did I remember the—shit.” Stiles shoves his face into Peter’s shoulder.

“—like did you remember all of the many life-lessons I apparently managed to instill in you in a mere handful of hours?” Peter says. He’s not trying to hide his smile.

“Shut up.” Stiles’ hand curls against Peter’s hip. “Okay. Yeah. We should talk about something else.”

“All right,” Peter says, leaning back. “We’ll find something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the main story. There are three epilogues coming. Because there was so much plot that putting in sex or even heavy petting was going to seem absurd, but I'm not leaving this world without some of that.
> 
> Corpse-fat candles is a little reference to the Hand of Glory folklore, which actually requires a dead man's hand and a candle made from the rendered fat of his body. Supposedly the combination is a surefire way to paralyze people when you're invading their home (I'm tweaking that here).
> 
> Attorney-client privilege doesn't cover discussions about how to commit a crime, if the attorney thinks they're genuine and genuinely going to happen. Admittedly, there is way more grey in that rule than Hollywood ever bothers to explore.
> 
> I'm going to go into the East Coast supernatural world a bit more in the epilogues, but basically, I'm picturing it a bit like _John Wick_ or _Harry Potter_ , in the sense that there is this well-established system for operating in plain sight that everybody takes for granted and that efficiently handles any intrusion by the uninformed. Except we're going with the more comic angle and thus we get sheltered werewolves who don't have to be hardened soldiers from childhood on (Peter just likes educating himself about that sort of thing, nobody made him). I do love creating regional differences.


	19. Epilogue 1: Talia and John

Talia’s family ends up staying a few more days in Beacon Hills, less because there are still unusual things going on in the preserve and more because once they return to the Stilinski house, none of them really want to move an inch. They’re exhausted, and when it becomes clear that what’s left in the preserve is non-fatal, they do like good werewolves and burrow in for a good long nap.

Well, the rest of them do. Talia works up enough energy to call her youngest child and let Cora know that the crisis is over and they’ll be home by the end of the week, and to have whatever’s going on back home cleared out by then. And to call her Emissary, who has _finally_ gotten back from his conference and is matching all of her previous emails and voicemails with alarmed ones of his own. And—

“ _I’ll_ call my managing partner, thank you very much,” Peter tells her, slapping her hand away. Then he twists around so that she’d have to go through his entire torso to get back the phone from him. “I’ve been working on him for three years, I’m not going to have you ruin that much effort just because you want me home an extra day to snipe at Tyler.”

“You know, it’s not as if I haven’t found your phobia-grid. Or your paralegal payoff schedule,” Talia sighs, but she gives her glowering brother a pat on the shoulder and leaves him to it. “You should go back to bed right after.”

Peter sniffs. “After you, sister.”

And then, just as she’s turning back to him, he puts the phone to his ear and starts cheerfully trotting out an update on the camping accident Laura’s suffered, with his bloodshot eyes and unstyled hair and irritable little shoulder-hunch. Talia’s going to save it for a time when he’ll do more than just roll his eyes at her, but when he’s like that, he and Derek look adorably alike.

She leaves him to it, and once she’s confirmed that her two eldest children are, in fact, where they’re supposed to be—sacked out in the upstairs bedroom, and if Derek has company and Laura is humming the way she does when she’s in the middle of a textstorm, that’s the most all right they’ve been all week—she goes…to the back porch of the Stilinski house. No, there isn’t a bed on it, and even if there wasn’t, she’s not about to risk napping outdoors in this town yet. But John’s out there.

He's holding a cup of coffee, in jeans and a faded t-shirt with his sheriff’s jacket thrown over his shoulders, and staring out at the woods. “I’m not going,” he says as she steps over the threshold.

Talia pauses. Then closes the door quietly behind her. “I wasn’t going to ask.”

“Nah, just stare at me, and maybe knock me out and drag me back inside if I made a move that way,” John says, gesturing with his mug. The coffee smells very cold and very stale, and when it slops over the rim, John glances down at the porch. Then shrugs and tips out a little more. “I can still get a read on you, kind of. It’s not—it’s not as—”

“As strong?” she offers. His arms and neck are free of the—no, they’re not, she can just see the patterns glimmering, as if they can’t quite push through to the top layer of skin. But his eyes are still clear.

John thinks about it, then shakes his head. “No, if I feel like it, I can…it’s more like it’s not as…not as much like I have to. Like I could pretend I couldn’t do it, if I wasn’t just so goddamn tired.”

“Well, I’m not thinking anything important,” Talia says, and takes up a position about a yard away, where she can lean against one of the posts.

She feels him looking her over. The coffee slops quietly in the mug, the boards creak under his shifting feet. He makes a noise in his throat once, a pained grunt that wheezes a little at the end.

“I’m not going to kill myself _now_ ,” John finally says, his tone equal parts exasperated and curious.

“Didn’t say you were,” Talia says.

“If you’re going to think that loud, you might as well,” John says. Snaps, really, and rocks back on his heel enough to make the board under it crack sharply. Sounds like he’s going to storm off, and then he just blows his lungs out and tosses the rest of the coffee over the railing. “Look, okay, I wasn’t—you can’t—when things are like that, you can’t really think straight, and I was just—and it’s not like that anymore.”

Talia nods. “I know.”

“And I’m _glad_ it’s not,” John goes on, the anger growing in his voice. “I’m glad. I stopped being sad about Claudia the first time she stuck Stiles with a body, and—Jesus, you know, he could’ve ended up in jail. Or in somewhere like that Eichen House—”

Talia does look over then, since she’d thought Eichen House had been shut down way before the demon really got going. Yet another damned thing her Emissary at the time hadn’t confirmed the way he’d claimed to.

“Yeah, yeah, I got hold of their files. They were thinking of rebuilding it for a while, just to have a place to put all the patients,” John says, snorting. He sets the mug on the rail and looks back at her, eyes slightly narrowed. “Ended up most of ‘em died off before the funding could be arranged, or else who knows if they would’ve put us in there. Getting to eavesdrop on people’s fears isn’t as fun as it sounds. And watching everybody you get close to get suckered into dying out in the woods, and Stiles couldn’t even have a study date without somebody turning up—”

“You put together a whole police station of people who’d go out in the woods with you,” Talia says.

“That team’s built on a morgue full of bodies,” John snaps back at her. He twists around and stares out at the woods, the muscle in his jaw working. Then tucks his chin down. Grimaces, breathes in, and raises his head again. “Hell. I don’t even know…I can’t even talk to somebody like…like this is over.”

“But you’re not going to kill yourself.” When he jerks his head around, Talia just raises an eyebrow. She crosses her arms loosely over her chest, and keeps looking at him. “I’m not needling you just for the sake of doing it, John—”

“I still think you think this is kind of funny,” he says. He’s suddenly less angry, the smell of it on him cut in half, but not close to calm yet.

Talia shrugs. “Well, I do, because while I haven’t lived your life, I’ve seen enough to know sometimes that’s all you’re going to get out of it. And I’m bringing this up because I’ve seen this part, the part after it’s over. When you think it should be better, but it’s not yet, and you’re just tired and you just wonder if it’d be easier to stop while you’re ahead.”

John opens his mouth as if he means to respond, angrily, and then he tilts his head back instead. Closes his mouth and studies her, while she turns to look at the woods and then turns back when she hears something in the kitchen. Just Parrish, as it turns out, on the phone with what sounds like another deputy as he rattles through the fridge.

“I still owe you a coffee,” John says.

“Save it for when you actually have something decent,” Talia snorts, pivoting on her heel. From his smell, John’s got enough besides his frustrations to dwell on, and she does want to check Parrish off her list before she gets in her nap.

* * *

Tyler wants to fly out. Deucalion’s heard, probably from Morrell, about what’s happened and wants to come up. Talia doesn’t particularly want to see either, even though she’s rested enough to deal with them, for the simple reason that it’s about what she and Beacon Hills are now going to do, and she doesn’t believe those two things have to be in the same sentence. But nobody _else_ is going to believe her, outside of her family, so she doesn’t want to deal with it.

“Mom, did you _actually_ pay for Jordan’s apartment repairs?” Laura accuses, catching up to Talia in the parking lot of the police station.

“No, of course not, I wasn’t responsible for that,” Talia says, continuing to walk so that her daughter has to follow her into the building. “I paid for the two cars we damaged. Your trust fund paid for his apartment.”

The deputy on duty isn’t Tara, but another woman whose name escapes Talia. She certainly knows them, and when she mutters for Talia to wait while she goes to get John, she’s already three feet away from the reception desk. Talia leans against the desk and pulls out her new phone and finishes her email to Tyler explaining why he should put that airfare money towards a helicopter transfer for Deaton, and then looks up at her sputtering daughter.

“I thought you liked him!” Laura finally says.

“Oh, I do. Which is why, if he’s going to have an issue with your privilege, he’d better have it now rather than later, when Peter’s not distracted and remembers about our cousin’s trip to Cambridge in the eighties,” Talia says. She looks at her phone again, then sends a second email to Tyler asking if anybody’s told Ennis that Kali survived. Ennis and Deucalion are friends and that should keep Deucalion in SoCal for at least a week. “He’s a hellhound, he’ll bring other things to the table besides money. Just make sure he keeps that in mind and his pride should be all right.”

Laura closes her mouth with a sharp click. Stares at Talia for a little bit, then takes a step back. Then stares again. “Oh, God. You _do_ like him.”

“And so do you, if you’d just stop thinking about this as a way to annoy your brother. You know he actually gets more irritated when you don’t realize you’re grossing him out as when you’re doing it on purpose,” Talia says, giving her daughter a serene smile.

“Oh, my God,” Laura says. She takes another step towards the door, then turns and walks out as if she’s floating in the middle of a dense haze.

“They actually turn out okay when you do that?” says John from behind her.

“Well, only one dead love interest between the three of them, and that happened after the break-up and was entirely on the love interest,” Talia says, turning around. Then she blinks.

John hunches his shoulders, but that’s the only sign of self-consciousness; otherwise he looks just as faintly exasperated as he always does. Maybe with a little less red webbing in his eyes, and grey under his tan. “I put in for sick leave yesterday,” he says, nodding to his uniform-less body. “Just came in to file some stuff on Gerard Argent, so Tara doesn’t have to deal with that mess.”

“Ah,” Talia says.

There are other people in the station besides the woman who’d been manning the desk when Talia had arrived—she can hear at least two more heartbeats, and one of them is near enough to eavesdrop. John doesn’t really seem inclined to give them anything to listen to, given that instead of asking Talia why she’s here, he just keeps looking at her. 

“How long did you put in for?” she finally asks, when he clearly won’t.

“Two days,” John says. He rubs at the side of his face, and she thinks he stifles a yawn into the side of his palm. “He’s dead, so they’re delaying on sending state officials down, but when they do come, I gotta be the one to talk to them. Not that Tara and Jordan aren’t good, but they just don’t—it’s just kind of insulting.”

“On top of you giving them the runaround, and I guess they don’t deserve that,” Talia can’t help observing.

John snorts, then offers her a dry smile. “I don’t think they mind the runaround so much, when it tidies things up for them. We’ve gotten pretty good at that here. But yeah, no point in being an asshole about it. _That_ doesn’t win them over.”

“It doesn’t?” Talia says.

He could go either way, she thinks. Annoyed or amused. And then he chooses a third way, and just comes around to her side of the desk. He moves his arm as if he’s going to take her by the elbow, but at the last moment, he steps back.

“It’s…weird. Still can do it,” he mutters, looking away from her. “Just come in and put the words down and they’re going to take it, I know they were. I’ve been doing this so long…”

“My ex died in a freak accident. Stomped to death by a moose on a hunting trip,” Talia says.

John looks at her for a moment, and she thinks she can see just the faintest hint of silver in his eyes. “He that guy I shot?” he finally says. “The baby-killer?”

He catches Talia by surprise; she almost has to ask him what he means before something about the silver in his eyes reminds her about the nightmares his demon-wife had raised. “That didn’t happen,” she says. Even now, it takes effort to steady her voice. “I kicked him out first.”

“Yeah.” He’s still looking at her, steady and level. “Moose? Isn’t that kind of—kind of hard? To get hold of?”

“Well, what do you go with?” Talia asks.

“Coyotes scavenging, and just fudge the time of death a few days,” John says. Then he makes a face. “When we have time, okay. Sometimes we just have to—add some details at the morgue.”

“It’s a bit easier to get moose legs than you think, actually. Hooves and all. And the antlers are easy. And the nice thing about being around for a while, a lot of packs in a lot of different places owe my family.” Then Talia takes a breath, and even though it isn’t that deep, she feels her smile slipping off her face. She doesn’t fight to keep it—she probably sound, but the way John’s looking at her is surprisingly free of judgment. “I don’t think the kids miss him at all. They were really young—Cora’d barely been born—that’s one reason why we had to outsource to another pack. So that helped, too, but…for the longest time afterward, they’d still draw a dad in their family. If you asked them, they wouldn’t…it’s not that they missed him, but they just…just thought you had to put one in.”

John listens to her. Doesn’t look like he’s going to comment on that either, but it’s oddly soothing, his lack of commentary. She doesn’t have to have a response ready for him.

“Peter finally got them to stop. It wasn’t that big a deal, he just told them it was silly and wasn’t real, and…they stopped,” Talia adds after a moment. “But the funny thing…the funny thing was, even after that, I’d catch myself looking at the drawings and _they_ looked wrong to me. The ones where they’d stopped adding a dad.”

“Yeah,” John finally says. He glances over his shoulder, not that urgently, and then looks back at her. “It’s too goddamn quiet in my head. I never was trying to hear her—I was trying to keep her out, but—it’s so quiet, and I keep listening for…even when I wasn’t before.”

“Get some headphones,” Talia says.

John starts. He’s going to be irritated with her now, she thinks, and his mouth does twist. But…he just rocks back on his feet a little, eyeing her. “So you fix those drawings?”

“Nope. I thought about it, and then—then my mother caught me out. She would be out half the month with my father, but she was in that night and—she just could read minds sometimes,” Talia says. She sounds irritated. She still is, after all these years. “She told me I was a stupid little girl stuck in her dreams, and I wasn’t watching my kids—as if she was either. She didn’t even know if Peter was in school half the time, that shows you—anyway. She got me mad, and I drove the kids to Disneyland that weekend.”

“Disneyland?” John says. His tone ripples a little, as if he’s holding back a laugh. “Well, wait, they were born as werewolves, so I guess—”

“I gave up ten minutes in and just told everybody I did special-effects make-up,” Talia says. “Luckily it was the weekend before Halloween.”

John does laugh then, low and under his breath, but the crinkles around his eyes aren’t forced. He takes a step back towards the desk, then looks at her, running one hand through his hair. “I think I’m gonna go home and see if—” he hesitates so slightly she only picks it up from his heartbeat “—Stiles didn’t turn that Xbox of his into some fancy magical tool. Listening to music kind of just puts me to sleep.”

“Well, if nobody else is awake, I might be able to knock the rust off my console skills,” Talia says, lacing her fingers together. She stretches them out in front of her till the knuckles pop, then lets her hands fall back against her sides. “My kids get into the occasional game, and I do think it’s important as a parent to know what they’re interested in. Anyway, werewolf reflexes, they all just come down to button combinations, I can usually pick it up fast.”

“Maybe. We always did pretty well against Scott,” John says, looking bemused. He glances over his shoulder again, then shrugs off whatever he’d been thinking of doing. “All right, if you’re going to make yourself available, let’s—I’m just going to grab a coffee before I get back in the car. You—”

“I said when you have something _decent_ ,” Talia says, with a pointed sniff.

“It’s pretty good for the age of the coffeemaker,” John says, but he’s smiling. “You want to upgrade that for us, too?”

Talia rolls her eyes. “You know, people talk about privilege all the time, but nothing annoys me more than abuse of favors owed.”

“I wasn’t gonna call it a favor,” John says, walking out with her. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Oh?” Talia says. “When?”

“When I get my deputy back,” John says, and then he laughs unashamedly at the expression on her face. “Yeah, you’ll see.”

* * *

Jordan Parrish, as it turns out, is ex-military. Talia has a hard time believing it, given how he tends to slouch when he’s being sarcastic, but he is, and he still has certain connections. So when John’s sick leave runs out and he still doesn’t want to take up the position of sheriff again, Jordan makes a few introductions and John ends up with a decent private consultant contract on certain top-secret government projects out in the Southwest.

“Not Area 51—you ever heard of a place called Skinwalker Ranch?” John says.

Talia’s long since returned to her home back east, but it’s not as if she’s glued to the place. And what happened in Beacon Hills was only _after_ she got there, so she sees no reason to develop any travel phobias. And yes, she’s kept in touch. She and John have enough in common, not including the fact that they both have children currently living in Beacon Hills.

“That sideshow?” Talia snorts, leaning her elbows on the table. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. Every werewolf who survives their first full moon’s heard of it. We tell each other, if you don’t watch how you handle yourself in public, you’ll end up down there.” 

“Well, I wasn’t gonna say it was real,” John says, idly fiddling with his coffee-stirrer. He glances out at the mesas in the distance, then back at her; his color’s a lot healthier these days. He tans well, and the sun’s bleached his hair a bit, so that the old-gold blends in with the silver hairs. “But if it _was_ real…that’s the kind of place they have me cleaning out. And it’s really not about doing research, or making weapons, or anything like that. They just want it cleaned out. Too close to a practice range of theirs and they don’t want their soldiers getting killed.”

Talia drops her chin on her hand. “You sound surprised?”

“I just thought I’d have to—to really work to check that they weren’t doing anything I wasn’t okay with,” John shrugs. “I mean, I did. And they checked out. I just never—that’s just not how it’s been before, with other government agencies.”

“What, you mean Scott’s dad? Scott’s dad who you let take over the station?” Talia says.

John makes a face at her. “I didn’t _let_ him—we made a deal. Jordan didn’t want to run the place, not this year, and Rafael was going to get involved one way or the other, and it just seemed better to put him where Tara and Jordan are going to check all the paperwork first anyway.”

“Oh, I’m not saying it wasn’t a good thing to co-opt him. I’m just surprised, I didn’t think he and Scott—” Then Talia stops herself. She picks at her half-eaten croissant instead, giving John a few seconds. She knows him better these days, but he still hasn’t explained all of the various feuds that’d been going on, and he can have some odd reactions about Scott. But John just sits there, looking like he knows where she’s going and like he’s resigned himself to how annoying it is, so she continues. “I heard from Derek that things were better, but it didn’t seem like he really _likes_ the supernatural any more than he did.”

“He doesn’t. Then again, I’m not really that fond of a lot of supernatural things either.” For a second John looks indecisive, and then he settles on barely tolerant and pulls himself forward in his seat. “I think he’s decided that he does want to be part of Scott’s life, for good, and he’s not an idiot. He knows he’s got to know a little bit of what’s going on. And he knows he’s got to keep that kid out of trouble—can’t you talk to Derek about that? Allison means well, but she’s got her parents to deal with, and sometimes I think she’s doing the same thing as Scott, trying to make up for things with the wrong people. Derek seems…”

“Like when he gets into trouble, it’s for good, selfish reasons that you can scold him for without feeling like you’re martyring him?” Talia suggests. Then grins when John half-winces and makes a ‘you-said-it’ motion with his hand. “He’s working on it.”

“Yeah?” John says, one brow rising.

“I don’t micro-manage my children, John,” Talia says primly. “At least not when I don’t think someone is going to die. Peter wishes I would too, but then he thinks I handhold them too much, so honestly, there’s no winning.”

John snorts. Gives her a look as if he could say a few things about Peter, but she just keeps staring at him, nice and steady and fully knowing that if he goes there, he’s got to bring up Stiles, and eventually he sighs and turns to look at the landscape instead. He picks up his coffee and sips at it. Then, the mug only half-lowered, he frowns and looks over at her. “You not going to drink that?”

“Hmm?” Then she looks down at the mug in front of her. “Oh, I will.”

“Yeah, well, it’s more than decent. At these goddamn prices, has to be,” John mutters. He takes another sip, then puts down his cup. Doesn’t quite have his eyes back up to her face when he goes on, as casual as she is. “So why do you care?”

“What?” Talia says, blinking.

John’s eyes flick to the side as if he might have rolled them, and only changed his mind at the last minute. “You flew out here to have coffee with me.”

“Well, you owed—”

“Your brother’s got Stiles over on the East Coast, Derek’s up in Washington on Argent property, and Laura’s in Beacon Hills telling Jordan and Rafael how to run hunts,” John says, in that same dry, matter-of-fact voice. “You have this. You don’t even need to claim Beacon Hills—you’ve got this without the land. You figured out how to do that and one-up your family. So why?”

He would have asked sooner or later. He’s too smart not to, so Talia has been expecting this. But—not so calmly, she thinks. She was thinking it’d come out in the middle of something, some fight. Them arguing about bad ways to die again, or legacies, or something like that.

“And it’s not that I can still do this, either,” John says, holding up one hand. Silver lines interlace up to the fingertips, then flow back into his skin as the coffeeshop behind them briefly disappears into an endless desert.

“I didn’t think it was about who was stronger, with you,” Talia says after a moment. She wraps one hand around her coffee. “Though it’s not like you’re so little, compared to the rest of us.”

“Yeah, I know, they’re aboveboard with me out here because they know it’s not worth the money, what I could wreck if they aren’t. Or Stiles. Or the rest of you,” John says. “But you’re not answering my—” 

“Because I like you, John. I liked you from the start—yes, even as you were literally kicking me into the backseat of your car,” Talia says. She pauses to enjoy the unsettled expression on his face, then lifts her cup. Lets him get a good look before she drinks her coffee. “You’re right, you know. A lot of us aren’t likeable. Especially the ones strong enough that you can’t just never run into them again. But I just thought…it’d be a shame if you didn’t live through it.”

She gets through two-thirds of the cup before he finally gets hold of himself enough to speak. “You like me? That’s it?”

“I have duties, as alpha and just as someone who has a family she loves dearly.” Talia sets down the cup, then folds both hands around it as she looks at him. “I don’t actually get to be selfish too often. So when I do, I try to make sure it’s for a…a clear reason. It might not be the best reason, and might be something I regret later, but I know why I’m doing it when I’m doing it. So why do you like me?”

He doesn’t really start. His shoulder hitches, but that’s just reflex, the same way you blink when somebody flashes a bright light near your eye. The surprise isn’t in his face or smell. “I think because I feel like I’m talking to you, when I’m talking to you. Not to your pack, or to your hundred years of tradition, or to whatever secret handshake society—”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I remember your family,” John says. He purses his lips a little, then straightens up. “But they’re just—people. Your brother, your kids. And I know all of them, too. You’re all people, not—not symbols.”

And he’s surprised Talia again. Completely, this time: it’s not about the timing or the situation or the way he’s phrasing it. She just didn’t see him… _seeing_ that.

“So,” John says. He hesitates, cocking his head, and then puts his arms on the table. His hands land near hers, then tip over so that they’re wrapping her fingers around her cup. “I finally bought you one. Am I getting to buy you any more?”

“As I recall, this one was returning a favor,” Talia eventually says. She’s smiling. She’s smiling hard enough she probably should be worried about how wolfish she looks, even without her fangs out, but…she doesn’t really want to care about that.

John laughs. “That’s a yes, then.”

“Yes,” Talia says.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From what I understand, Jordan's whole thing was _loosely_ inspired by English folklore around Black Shuck/black dogs, which centers around the East Anglia region. Hence, Cambridge.
> 
> In this universe, supernatural beings do have to be concerned about being caught out by everyday law enforcement and getting publicly exposed, but certain specialist branches of the government are aware. And some of them aren't interested in trying to control the supernatural, because they've done the math and tech and drugs don't automatically top magic and if you can't immediately nullify the magic when somebody gets upset, you're going to lose a lot of people and resources and nobody has bottomless Cold War slush funds anymore. Cheaper to just hire them as contractors to deal with each other.
> 
> Skinwalker Ranch is a real place. Whether or not its legends have any credibility, I leave up to you and Google search.
> 
> The reference to Allison's parents isn't a typo. Next epilogue will explain.


	20. Epilogue 2: Derek, Scott, and Allison

Derek’s dating people, not stupid, and if he doesn’t have to go to Beacon Hills to see Scott or Allison, he’s not going to. Sure, Claudia Stilinski has finally been laid to rest, but if you ask anybody in that town, she was only the _biggest_ problem they had. Literally. Ask them.

“I thought that happened before the second darach,” Allison says, frowning down at Scott.

“No, I’m pretty sure it was after—right, because that was Stiles’ sixteenth birthday, and that was the first year his mother tried sending him a present,” Scott says. His voice drops a little and he scrunches his shoulders stiffly against the grass, but at least he stays lying down. When they’d first gotten out here, he could barely stay still for two seconds without going out to check on a heartbeat. “They weren’t the kind of presents you’d…anyway. So that’s when they started expanding the hospital. I don’t actually think it was because of what was going on in town, I think they just got voted extra funding or something.”

Allison looks skeptical, from where she’s sitting with her knees pulled up against her chest, but she just ends up taking a drink from her lemonade. “Well, the timing worked out.”

“Yeah, and Mom got a raise, so we could move out of our apartment to an actual house. That worked out too, since that was the year I got bitten,” Scott says. He absently scruffs his hair, then glances over at Derek. “Anything else you were wondering about? I mean, I know it’s changed a lot since you lived there, actually. It’s funny, because it’s not the kind of town that seems like it would, but—”

“People die a lot, so you should never get attached to any one store,” Allison says, with a dry twist of a smile. “I learned that the hard way, my first month. My favorite coffeeshop shut down because the owner got killed.”

Scott frowns, then nods. “Oh, right. That was the rogue banshee.”

“Rogue?” Derek says.

“Yeah, she didn’t want to just wait around and forecast people’s deaths—she wanted to make sure they happened,” Allison says, making a face. “She was kind of…not right in the head.”

“Well, it was mostly her doctor’s fault,” Scott says, though he’s got that look on his face, the one where he looks worn-out from how hard he has to try to be fair. “They shut down Eichen House and all, but it took us a while to realize that some of the staff had gotten rehired at the hospital and weren’t really taking care of their patients the way you should.”

All Derek had asked was when the hospital had gotten so much bigger, and he’d only asked that because Scott had been saying he might have to go back early because his dad the new sheriff needed help finding something in the hospital records, like there wouldn’t be a librarian or records-keeper or whatever you call people who get files for you. Except Derek has a feeling that if he asks _that_ , he’s going to end up learning about another three massacres and supernatural crazies even Peter needs to look up before he remembers exactly what they are. 

Well, actually, it’s not a feeling—Derek knows that that’s what will happen, because that’s what happened when he asked why Scott always cooks enough food for eight people (in case nobody makes it home for two days) and automatically packs half of it in Tupperware (for hospital wait rooms). And why Scott and Allison flinch at the sight of candy canes (Krampus encounter). And why, instead of a spare tire, Scott’s motorcycle storage has flares in five different colors (Scott’s dad trying to be supportive and something about the _real_ Quetzalcoatl). It’s not their fault and if Derek had been there, he’s not going to pretend he would’ve ended up with less nervous tics. But Derek just…can’t help noticing this stuff.

He probably could do a better job of hiding it, since just then Scott looks over at him. “We really weren’t like this _all_ the time,” Scott says, with a weak smile. He already has that slightly distant look people get when they’re saying goodbye. “Up till about sophomore year, it was just…maybe every couple of months.”

Allison shifts and Derek doesn’t even look at her, just grimaces in apology at Scott. “I wasn’t saying that. I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, I know. I wasn’t saying you did, sorry,” Scott says, looking even more wistful.

Derek opens his mouth, then pushes himself up instead. It’s a nice day out, sunny without being too humid, and Allison’s family’s Washington property is really beautiful—definitely landscaped, but in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re at a resort or anything like that. And the woods just feel…they feel open. They’re different from the overused East Coast forests Derek’s used to, endlessly expansive with moss everywhere that muffles the sounds, but they’re also different from the woods in Beacon Hills. Even without the demon, to an outsider like Derek, the preserve feels claustrophobic, like it’s going to shut you down any moment.

Which was the whole point of getting away from that. Yeah, it was also about Derek not wanting to have another Beacon Hills near-death experience, but honestly…he’d meet Scott and Allison there if he had to. He just thinks it’s a lot better for all of them if they meet somewhere else. If they can actually _keep_ Beacon Hills out of it. “I don’t really remember the town anyway. I left when I was a little kid, and Mom didn’t let us out that much,” he says, shrugging. “You can tell me about it if you want, but I don’t miss it or anything like that. I don’t really think I missed that much either.”

As soon as he says that, Derek grimaces again. But neither Scott nor Allison look offended—Allison just takes the out and runs with it, shitty as it is. “I feel a little like that about this place,” she says, waving her arm at the surrounding woods. “It’s really gorgeous here, but—you know, my grandmother lived here, and when she died, Gerard moved out and Dad hired somebody to maintain things, but we never—we ran training here a couple times. But we never really lived here.”

“Really?” Scott says. Then he tucks his chin in a little bit. “I mean, it is really pretty, and the house is great…but I guess if it reminded people of your grandmother…”

A flicker of alarm passes through Allison’s scent, though she keeps it off her face. She also gets up and heads back to the porch behind them, with glass in hand. “Yeah. Kind of. I mean—she knew what she was doing. Really knew, I went through her journals too, and—Gerard knew what she’d done, but not how to undo it. Either of you want anything?”

Derek doesn’t, but he looks at Scott and Scott’s thinking about it, but Scott doesn’t ask people for things. Unless it’s a bunch asking together and then sometimes he will, like that’s how he thinks pack works. So Derek’s going to say he’ll have another beer, but then Scott nods. “Water?”

“Water?” Allison repeats, with a faint skeptical note.

Scott tilts his head, and suddenly both of them smell amused. “And a beer, I guess,” he says. He glances at Derek. “You?”

“Beer,” Derek says.

Allison nods and goes into the house. Scott watches her for a second, his eyes dipping down her back, and then he rolls over. Pushes up onto his hands and knees, dusts off some grass, and then turns to Derek again. “You tired yet?”

“No, but I guess we could move to the chairs,” Derek says, pointing his chin at the enormous round ones on the enclosed part of the porch. “It’s getting late, mosquitos probably going to come out soon.”

Scott makes a face. “Yeah…it’s funny, I never had any problems after Kali bit me, but up here—and it’s weird how they still itch for a while. Not as long as a regular person, but still.”

“It’s a territory thing. If you made some marks, they’d probably stop,” Derek says as they go up the steps. Then he pauses to let Scott go ahead and pick a chair first. “Then again, I don’t—I’m not that great with magic, but Allison’s family would have stuff on this place. That’s what she was saying, I think.”

“Yeah, I think so.” Scott twists back to look at him, a little confused, and for a second Derek thinks he’s going to have to explain—then Scott plops himself down. He still is frowning a bit, and before Derek can go past him, he tugs away a sham and tosses it so that he’s basically making a space for Derek next to him. “She got—she had to teach herself a lot of that kind of stuff after Gerard went rogue. Even before she came down to Beacon Hills, I think Gerard got her family into some trouble—she and Stiles actually kind of bonded over all that, at first.”

Well, if he’s going to ask, and he’s not really that off standard werewolf manners with that. Derek flops down next to him and then almost freezes up as their shoulders touch. It’s not that he’s a prude, or _that_ ridiculous about this—it’s that Scott is so damn careful about himself. Sometimes Derek thinks he might need to point out _he’s_ a werewolf too; sure, alpha marks don’t heal instantly on betas, but they still heal.

But that’s just going to draw attention to it, Derek doesn’t need Laura or Peter backhand-advising him to know that, so Derek just lets it happen. Scott wants to sprawl into him, he’s cool with it.

“It’s not that he hates her, by the way. He just always has been the Beacon Hills expert. And he had to be, but he kind of let it take him over a little, and that’s not good for him,” Scott adds. He fidgets a little, then delicately puts his legs up on the wicker, already scuffed and dirtied, table. His arm presses into Derek, and then he pulls it out and slings it over the back of the couch. Then glances at Derek and laughs quietly. “Hey, he’s my best friend and I’ll do anything for him, but also, he’s Stiles.”

“Well, I can’t really talk about him,” Derek says as neutrally as he can, even though he’s feeling cheerful too, and not just about the physical contact. “Usually because he’s doing all of it.”

“Stiles never should have had to do everything himself.” Scott’s smile fades as he leans his head back. “He and his dad fought a lot over that. They tried not to let us know, but…hard not to hear it. It’s just—he was ten, and his dad had _no_ idea, really just trusted his mom with all the research and looking back, that probably wasn’t the best—but how were they going to know?”

Derek can’t answer that, and doesn’t think Scott wants one anyway. “So they should be able to just talk about magic now?” he says instead.

Scott frowns again, but upon smelling him, Derek realizes he’s just thinking. “Maybe…Allison could use help too, and she’s kind of bad about that in the same way. I mean—we don’t blame her family.”

“But you just went through a lot, and maybe she just thinks you’re all too tired?” Derek says. Though even as he says it, it doesn’t ring right to him; he doesn’t need to see Scott’s slight head-shake to feel that. “Her stuff is pretty fucked-up too, with what Gerard did and then her dad getting stuck in a literal hellhole and whatever’s going on with her mother. Maybe she just…maybe it’s just hard opening that up. My family, you know—you saw. We’d rather kill each other than let in outsiders when we have a problem.”

At first that doesn’t sit right with Scott either and he’s going to say so, but then he closes his mouth and slouches back, looking out over the backyard. He and Allison have known each other a lot longer, and if Derek were him, Derek probably would point that out—but Derek also thinks no matter how good the two of them are at reading each other, and they are _good_ at it, they just don’t hear each other sometimes.

And Scott’s not Derek anyway. He thinks about it, and then starts a little, glancing over. “Sorry, didn’t mean to drop out on you,” he says. “I was just—yeah, that might be—I never thought of that.”

Derek almost feels like he should apologize, which is…he never feels like that around anybody else, except maybe his mom. And the weird part isn’t that, it’s that he doesn’t really mind Scott making him feel that way.

“I should. I think you’re onto something there,” Scott goes on. He looks at the house, as something makes a noise in the kitchen, and then visibly relaxes. Then he makes a face that’s less funny than…than resigned, in a not-quite-bitter way. “I have time to actually think about stuff. It’s—this should be great—this _is_ great, I just—I just wish I’d get used to it.”

“Well, you got attacked a lot, I think that’s going to take a while,” Derek says, and immediately hates himself.

Scott’s eyes grin, but he sniffs before the grin gets to his mouth and then looks…Derek can’t exactly peg it, except that it makes Derek want to drop his chin and stretch out his shoulders at the same time. Not a defensive stretch, more like…like showing what he’s got.

Which Scott is definitely seeing, from the way he leans over. “I think we definitely need to talk more,” he says. “You’re good at this.”

Actually, Derek is shitty at it, but—okay, Scott’s going to make out with him. He’ll take that.

When it comes to this, anyway, Scott’s a lot more alpha, pushing up onto Derek with his hands and then bearing down mouth first, so either Derek slides off the couch or slides under him. Derek goes with under, because he’s not stupid, and Scott’s fingers twist into his shirt, pulling it so tight that it practically disappears from between them and the heat of their bodies just flows free. Then Scott lets go, same time as Derek rubs his tongue against the roof of Scott’s mouth, right behind where the canines come out, and—kind of scrunches his half-curled hands up Derek’s chest.

Except scrunches isn’t really the right word, with how Scott’s nails dig and scratch through, raising the blood up in the skin, like it’s strings and he’s hooking them and using them to jerk Derek’s hips up, make Derek squeeze hard at his bicep, hiss into his mouth. ‘Scrunches’ is just so—so lame. It sounds like Cora talking.

Derek makes a face, not wanting his sister in his head right _now_ , and their mouths mismatch and Scott nips his lip. He twitches and Scott immediately stiffens up, and—hell, no, Derek’s not stopping this to talk Scott through how he is _fine_ and actually, just get that hand all the way down on Derek’s ass and they’ll work through it. He just grabs Scott’s wrist and pushes it there.

Which feels a little weird, in that place in the back of Derek’s head where he does actually remember everything he’s ever been lectured on, including about what alphas do and don’t tolerate. Even though he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Scott really doesn’t care, and it’s not just an ignorance thing, and—Scott likes it when Derek pulls him into it, Derek thinks. The man’s kissing back again, harder, and he has his other hand under Derek’s shirt, pushing around like maybe he’s confused and thinks Derek’s got a second shirt on and he needs to peel it up. It doesn’t feel nearly as annoying as it sounds—not even close.

His nails catch at Derek’s skin again and Derek tries to stop himself from moving at it. Can’t quite, so he’s reaching up to grab Scott’s shoulder and make sure the man doesn’t back down when Scott suddenly sniffs, hums low in his throat, and then—and then he scratches over Derek’s ribcage and down into the softer, unboned flesh between the end of that and the start of Derek’s waist.

“Fuck,” Derek mutters. Then he looks up.

But Scott’s grinning. A little openmouthed about it, honestly surprised that he’s getting that reaction, when he’s not just a goddamn alpha, or a true alpha, but a guy who’s lived through more bad things than half of Peter’s library put together, and…he’s just happy he can do this to Derek. It’s not even a dominance thing, Derek thinks. Scott just likes that Derek likes it.

“I guess if I keep at it, I’ll get better?” Scott says, half-breathless.

“At not dying?” Derek says. Because he is _bad_ at this.

Scott’s smile thins out. It doesn’t quite go away, and before Derek can grimace too much at himself, Scott brings up both of his hands and sets them on Derek’s shoulders. He pauses, studying Derek, and then— _shoves_.

The couch creaks. Derek’s groan is louder. Scott doesn’t smile again, but his eyes do get dark and focused, and then he bends and Derek fists one hand in his shirt and pulls him down faster.

“Okay. Yeah. Practice,” Scott mutters a couple seconds later, where he’s sucking at a spot behind Derek’s jaw that automatically tips up Derek’s chin. His hand slips off Derek’s half-undone fly, grazes the erection that’s desperately trying to push through it, and then moves back as Derek bucks sharply. “Um, but I—you gotta lift or I can’t—”

“Okay, I’m trying, I just—” Derek grunts. His hips are stuck for some reason, catching on something in the couch every time he tries to push himself up. He probably needs to stop groping Scott’s back but he doesn’t really want to. “Get your pants, at least.”

Scott tilts his head, then shrugs and shimmies a few times and his pants and underwear drop to the ground, because he dresses just a _little_ better than Stiles the Goodwill fashion plate. Then he goes back to working at Derek’s jeans, which are _worth_ the superior fit. Most of the time. Just not right now.

And then Scott drops hard onto Derek, shoulder first, twisting around to—he’s shielding Derek. Also blocking Derek from getting up so much as a toe-claw, which almost makes Derek bite the guy before he catches up.

“Sorry, I just—I thought the floorboards here were squeaky enough?” Allison says. Holding up a fistful of beers.

Scott’s already crumpling in on himself, a distinct whiff of sadness rolling off him. Not embarrassment, it’s too intense for that. “Oh, yeah, no, we just—our fault for not—”

“Oh, my God, don’t feel _guilty_ ,” Allison says. Derek can’t see all of her face but she sounds amused, and a little frustrated. And smells a little sad too. “I’m okay with this. Unless you—”

“No, just put the beer down for later,” Derek says.

Scott pushes himself up to look at Derek and now Derek can see Allison’s expression properly, and she looks like this is funnier than it is sad. Which Derek will also take, even if again, they seem to think he’s better at this than he is.

Allison takes a step forward and sets the beer down on the table, with a little flourish of her fingers. Then she straightens up, rocking on her heels, and Derek can see the thread of uncertainty in her stance even before he smells it on her. He tugs at his hands, but they’re both still full of Scott.

“Hey,” Scott says. Quietly, and he flinches almost immediately after Allison does. Then he takes a deep breath, and sets his shoulders—Derek can’t see him setting his jaw too, but knows he is—and puts his hand out. “If you want…I mean, I’m not sure where you want to…how you want to…”

It’s almost like how they mark each other when they’re fighting, the way they tag-team awkward behavior, except a zillion times less useful. Derek makes an impatient noise before he can help himself; Allison’s eyes flick over to him and he tries to look as embarrassed as he feels.

And maybe it works, since she absently pushes her hair over one shoulder and comes over to prop a knee against the edge of the couch. A moment later, she puts her hand on Derek’s shoulder, leaning close enough that she and Scott could kiss, if they weren’t angling their heads so awkwardly, both trying to see each other and Derek at the same time.

Weirdly enough, Derek ends up thinking about how good they look together, even like that. Getting regular sleep now, even if it’s more nightmare-ridden than anybody should be okay with, the bags under their eyes receding in favor of a healthy flush. They look like they should be on a movie poster somewhere, in a shot from the happy ending.

He knows they’re not in that, not yet, and in a selfish way, he thinks that might be how he gets in there. But he’s going to—he’ll help make that happen. He’s going to be there _for_ it, but as long as he’s helping them get it too, he thinks that might be okay. He thinks they’ll be okay with it, anyway.

“Hey,” he says, watching them both startle a little. He bites down on how much he doesn’t like that and hikes at his shoulders, then manages to get one arm up enough to pull at his shirt.

“Ah, help?” Allison says, smiling a little. She reaches out and wraps her fingers around the hem, pulling up, and her knuckles brush his skin. They’re still cool from the beer and Derek shivers as the shirt goes up over his head.

When he jerks free of it, Scott’s staring at him. Hungry. Scott puts his hand on Derek’s chest and his fingers are as warm as Allison’s were cold, and Derek shivers anyway. Then twists to the side as Scott leans down—not avoiding the man, just stretching his throat out. And making room for Allison, who’s getting her clothes off. She sways dangerously towards the edge of the couch and Derek hooks an arm around her, pulling her back even as Scott starts seriously distracting him with the kisses down the side of the neck.

She keeps asking before she gets in with them, but once she does, she doesn’t hesitate at all. Her clothes come off and then she’s swinging her legs up, straddling Derek’s thigh, and getting down the part of Derek’s pants that had been beating both him and Scott, and when Derek gasps and Scott looks up, she ducks in and kisses Scott. Messy, open-mouthed, her hand going into his hair first, before he reaches around and cups a breast.

If Scott kisses like that’s the only time he feels comfortable with exactly what he is, Allison kisses like she’s going to make you comfortable with her. Derek’s been on the receiving end of it enough times to know what it can do, so he snorts in recognition when Scott suddenly staggers. Snorts, and then pushes himself up so that he can give Scott something to lean on.

Something grips hard at his bicep. He stops and Scott pulls away, staring at him again, and then Scott grins. Almost toothy enough, Derek thinks, just before Scott reaches his hand around and closes it on Derek’s nape. Not hard, just—enough for a hold. A hold, and then a look at Allison, half-shy, half-conspiratorial. “So this is right?”

“You’re asking the hunter over the other werewolf?” she says, eyes lighting up, even though there’s a slight tremble in her voice.

“Well, it’s you too. Not just werewolves,” Scott says.

Allison wavers. Sucks her breath, looking at Scott, her eyes shining a little too much, and now Scott looks like he might regret saying that and Derek just wants to _shake_ them sometimes. Shake them and then go kill something, and God, some of the things his mother mutters under her breath make so much sense now.

Thankfully, before Derek’s mind can go too far down thinking about his mother—worse than his sister, what is wrong with him—Allison suddenly grins. Darts in like she’s going to kiss Scott, but then takes a last-minute downwards twist and bites the side of Derek’s throat.

Derek jerks. Hard. All over. Scott’s fingers squeeze the back of his neck and he can’t help letting out a noise, low and rough and way too gutted to be a snarl. Allison’s breasts roll up against his chest, teasing their plumpness, while her teeth scrape up the tendon, then fasten in again, and Derek arches. His dick slips up between Allison’s thighs and her teeth lose their grip on him just as he feels the dampness coming down from her. She throws her head back in a full-throated moan, grinding down as he gets shaky hands to her hips.

“Fuck, yes.” Sweat’s dripping down the middle of her breasts and Derek laps it up, then presses his mouth down hard as Allison sinks onto him. “Oh, fuck, yes, it’s right.”

“Bite him too,” Allison gasps. Then closes around his cock, squeezing off whatever thought was about to pop into his head in favor of plain fucking _heat_.

Derek twists them over for better leverage and runs into something. Which moves a second later, just in time for his brain to catch up. But before he can say anything, Scott’s got his tongue in Derek’s mouth, and Allison’s still—she’s fucking him, really, fingers hooked into his ass and dragging his cock into her when he’s not doing it. “’s okay, I’m just gonna go get—think kitchen?” Scott says, pulling back. “Never mind, I’ll find it.”

“What?” Derek mutters, not meaning it. Not meaning anything except for just burying himself in Allison and in the freed-up space.

Scott gets off the couch, and goes somewhere, and Derek thinks—Derek thinks he’ll get him back in a second. When he’s done, and he’s got good leverage now, getting his knee down and grabbing the back of the couch and remembering to get his hand down between them, at the join of their bodies, and Allison’s game for it, rising up to meet him and the red-to-black inside of her mouth looks like he could dive into it whole, it’s open so wide. And—

It takes a moment. He pumps up into her twice without catching on, then realizes what it means that she’s got that look in her eyes, has that trembling grip on his arms, and he stops. It’s not exactly comfortable, but he’s not that kind of asshole.

Allison whips against him a last time, then tries to pull herself up against him even though he can feel her arms going stringless against his shoulders. “Oh, shit,” she says, turning her face away. “Shit. I’m—it’s been a really long time, it’s—it’s not you—”

“Hey, I don’t care, I just—I thought I’d have to get you?” Derek says. “I mean, usually—”

“Oh. That’s—that’s really thoughtful,” Allison says, blinking. She glances down and her eyes widen in surprise at seeing his hand, even though he never got close to actually finding anything useful to her. “A lot of guys don’t even—don’t even know.”

“I have sisters,” Derek mutters. Then flushes himself. He pulls his hand out from between them, but when he makes to move back, she won’t let him go. He’s not really sure why and can’t quite look at her right now. “I mean, they talk about their dates. A lot.”

“And werewolf hearing,” Allison says knowingly.

Derek rolls his eyes. “Like hell, they yell it at me. If it’s shitty, they tell me exactly why it was shitty and not to do it that way and I _wish_ it was just making sure I didn’t overhear them.”

“Oh, my God. Really?” Then Allison leans in and rests her forehead against Derek’s cheek, since Derek’s still not looking at her. Her arm loops around his neck and she giggles. Twists a little, kisses his jaw, and giggles again. “I’m sorry, I just—oh, my God. I guess that’s one good thing about being an only child.”

She laughs a third time, and something about it loosens up Derek’s shoulders. He moves his head and catches her eye, and then kisses her. Allison smiles against his mouth, pulling him closer—she’s not ready yet, he can smell that, but she doesn’t seem to want to pull apart. She does shift so that he’s half-out, but then she puts her hand down and wraps it around his cock and holds on when he growls into her shoulder.

“You should bite him,” she says into his ear.

Derek doesn’t quite process it. Then he starts to, but just then Scott walks back out onto the porch, a small tube in hand. Scott sniffs a little and falters.

“He’s not done,” Allison points out. “Besides, that’s more for you two.”

“Well,” Scott starts, and then he seems to realize it’s stupid and stops. He does pause again, but then he gets onto the couch.

Derek turns and pulls him over by the hip and kisses him, just to make sure, and while they’re doing that, Allison pulls off of Derek’s dick completely. Still keeps hold of it, giving it the occasional stroke so that Derek needs three tries to move over so Scott can get on him. Scott finally just _pushes_ him, and Derek’s useless after that, just happy to groan and spread his legs and Allison has to get the lube’s cap off, Scott’s so busy staring at Derek. Then helps Scott stick his fingers in Derek’s ass, rather than Derek’s thigh.

She doesn’t have to help Scott maneuver his cock in, which probably would have ruined the moment. Scott’s alpha brain kicks in and he folds Derek up against the couch-arm all by himself, while Allison curls up behind them and looks on. Not ashamed, and not creepy either, just—really into it, into how _they’re_ into it, and when they both start to get close, she smiles and crawls back up and drapes her arm over Scott’s back, puts her hand on Derek’s hand that keeps skidding off Scott’s sweaty shoulder. Helping them again.

Of course, then she leans in and looks at Derek, who can barely make her out as a fuzzy silhouette, Scott’s so close to making his spine jelly. “ _Bite_ him,” she orders.

Derek has his mouth open before he realizes. Then that back part of his brain kicks in, asking him what he thinks he’s doing, and Allison answers it by snuggling up to Scott and nipping his ear and Scott—Scott _dips_ his head and his jaw is there and Derek sinks in his teeth.

Scott goes stiff and for a second all the blood in Derek goes icy. And then…then this sound comes out of Scott, maybe. It’s so deep it seems like it has to come from somewhere else, somewhere deeper and older. It hits that way in Derek, dragging deep into his gut and pulling out this feeling like—like it’s not just him but going back to the beginning, and all he’s got to do is lie back and let it wash him along with it.

So he does. And Scott looks at him, teethmarks fading off his jaw, and a small, begging noise roots in the back of Derek’s throat. And never actually gets out because Scott grabs his hips, yanks down, then pins his shoulders and just _fucks_ him. Like it’s not even about alpha or beta, it’s just that Scott wants to turn him inside-out and then back again. And Derek is _absolutely_ okay with that.

“That can’t be a werewolf thing,” Scott mumbles, when they’ve all settled down, sticky but not so uncomfortable yet that they want to bother cleaning themselves up. “Right?”

“It’s a you thing,” Allison says. She lifts her head and turns it the other way and then puts it back down on Scott’s back. “You get to have those, Scott.”

Scott frowns. Derek moves and Scott glances at him instead, and Derek keeps going to lip at the underside of Scott’s jaw. He feels the man’s throat swell with a breath, but then Scott just sighs tolerantly and nuzzles back. “I know, I know. And—and I can share them if I want, too. Right?”

He’s not looking at Allison. On purpose, Derek thinks, because he is, and he can see how Allison goes quiet. She drops her head down Scott’s back, so her hair hides her face, but then her hand creeps back up. When its fingers curl over the top of Scott’s shoulder, Derek kisses their tips. They hold still, then brush back against his mouth.

“I don’t think it’s—it’s not you, you know,” Allison eventually says. “I know enough about werewolves now. You’re you, and Mom’s Mom, and if she just…if she just won’t see…”

“I could talk to her,” Scott says. He twists his head, then shifts up against Derek so that Allison slides around and ends up lying on both of them. Then he looks down at the top of her head. “I won’t, unless she asks—I promise. I mean, I know—I know that now too, that I can’t just fix it if people don’t want…but I just want you to know.”

“I do.” Allision lifts her head and smiles at them. It’s an effort for her, and she’s not totally convincing herself—or them—but she does try.

Scott smiles back. Then twists a little more, till Derek lets go of him. “I’ll grab some towels,” Scott says, pushing himself up.

Allison watches him go, curling herself to fill in the spaces he left so Derek doesn’t have a chance to get cold. He thinks that’s on purpose too; the two of them, and everybody else from Beacon Hills, all of them just can’t seem to do anything without planning behind it. And it’s not even a scheming thing, like with Peter, it’s just like they’ve burned that into them as an instinct.

“You keep getting these awkward conversations,” Allison says to him.

Derek starts a little, then remembers he can look at her just to look at her. “Yeah, but I still stay around.”

“Even when you don’t know what we mean, and it annoys you, and I can see it in your face, you don’t have to hide it.” She says that playfully, but her eyes are a little sad—but more appreciative than that—as she turns towards him. She regards him for a second, then sighs. “The whole thing with Mom…she didn’t agree with Dad and me going back to Beacon Hills to try and fix what Gerard did. She thought we should just—hire somebody, or tell somebody, but not go there ourselves. Because she thought it’d go wrong, that the place just wasn’t good for our family, not because she didn’t think we should do something.”

Her mother’s alive, and a werewolf, and Allison barely sees her. And Derek thinks when they do see each other, it’s around this house, based on the odd track he’s found while they’ve been up here: claw fragments, scratch marks, old scents. But when Allison had told him on the way up that her mother wasn’t dead, she’d also said that he wouldn’t have to worry about running into her or dealing with a pack up here, and she’d sounded so weird about it that he’s been holding back from following up. Which probably makes him as self-destructive as Peter tells him he can be, but—he’s trying to get them to be happy. Talking about her mother clearly isn’t going to do that.

But Allison seems set on telling him more right now, so Derek just swallows his thoughts and wraps his arm around her. And maybe keeps an ear out for Scott coming back.

“She went out on a hunt while we were down in Beacon Hills, and that’s the one she was bitten on,” she says. The side of her mouth tugs up when he puts his arm over her and she puts her head down on his chest. “I think she was going to kill herself. Family tradition with us. But Dad—Dad got sucked into the house and I—honestly, I panicked, and I ran and I called her and she—she didn’t.”

Allison’s father is back but for some reason he’s not around either. He keeps in closer touch—he and Allison speak on the phone almost every day, and Derek thinks they text a little more than that—but Derek has no idea where he is either, except that he’s not here. Which is hard for him to get, honestly. His family drives him crazy, but he knows if shit goes down, they are immediately coming. And staying way past the point where he wants to kick them out. He just can’t picture being separated from them for so long and then _still_ staying apart.

“I think she’s actually fine with being a werewolf now. She had some rough parts, but she—she gets a werewolf’s only as much of a monster as the person is,” Allison adds after a moment. She rakes some hair out of her eyes, then lets her arm flop so the hand is hanging over the couch. “But she…it’s like she still thinks she can’t be an Argent and be a werewolf, like it’s one or the other.”

“Does she know your dad’s back?” Derek asks.

Allison draws up her shoulders a little. Loosens them when Derek tightens his grip around her, then gives him a light pat on the side. “Yes. I told her, and they have each other’s numbers, but I don’t think—I don’t think that’s happening either. I haven’t really wanted to ask Dad about it, he’s been so busy just getting used to everything again, but…honestly, I think he’s mad at her.”

“For not killing herself?” Derek says.

Which is the worst guess he could’ve made, from how Allison jerks up. He grimaces and then she shakes her head, shrugs it off. The way she and Scott do that honestly makes him feel worse than any insult.

“No, just—her not really staying with me, even though she stayed alive. She still didn’t want to have anything to do with Beacon Hills,” Allison says, mouth twisting a little. She stays up, propping her arm against Derek’s chest, but looks down at his collarbone instead of meeting his eyes. “She took care of things—she was around if I needed something, but she wouldn’t go down there with me. Just stayed on our land here. And honestly, I think—I think she’s mad at him.”

“Why?” Derek says. At least not sounding like he’s judging this time.

Allison shrugs. Glances up at him, looking frustrated, and then ducks her head as if she’s embarrassed, when she seems to have pretty good reasons to be. “For—this will sound horrible, and she’s not, she’s really not, but—she’s okay with being a werewolf now but it took a while, and she never would have chosen it, and I think—I think it was easier on her when she thought he was dead. She just—she didn’t have to think about some things that she’s—they’re both working through things. They’ll get through it, I know them, they respect each other too much. But I think…they just might not love each other when they’re done with that.”

But that shouldn’t really have anything to do with being around their daughter, Derek almost says. He doesn’t, because again, not judging. Out loud, anyway—he knows he’s making an expression because she looks at him and she smiles, and it’s a tiny bit flattered, in the middle of all the old grief in her face.

“I’m okay. I mean—I love having Dad back, but I lived without him for years. I can give him some space while he figures out things. I think he just…he looks at me and thinks I survived and he doesn’t want to mess that up now,” Allison says. She shrugs again. “And I’m used to Mom. So…”

“So you get to have things for you,” Derek says, raising his brows when she looks at him. “Honestly, even if they have problems, you should get—”

“They have to deal with each other first. It’ll be better that way in the long run, I know that,” Allison says, a little pointed. Then she smells guilty about it, and leans in to kiss him.

He takes it, because of course he will, but he kisses back, and he thinks he makes it at least a little less guilty by the time she leans back, mouth a little smeared-looking, eyes heating up again. “You get things for you, Scott gets things for him, and—”

“And you get us,” Allison says.

Scott walks in just then, but hangs back when he hears them. He and Allison both look the same way, wanting it, not ashamed to admit _that_ , but just…getting ready in case they don’t get it. And look, Derek’s no stranger to inferiority complexes, but these two just take it so far.

“Yeah,” he says, staring at Allison, then at Scott. Then pushing himself over when Scott makes a slight move towards them, so Scott has one less excuse to not cross the rest of the way. “Yeah. I do. I went back to that town when I didn’t even have to, I think I should get something out of it.”

Scott laughs. He looks surprised by it, same as they are, but then he shakes his head and comes over, and he’s still smiling. “Well, I can do that—we can do that, anyway.”

“Yeah, of course,” Allison says. 

She puts her arm out, tugging Scott into them as he tries to swipe at Derek’s thighs with a hand-towel, and after a second, Scott lets her tumble them all together. It’s just a moment, and it’ll pass, but…they’re having more of them. Derek’s getting better at digging up moments like these, instead of all of the guilt and frustration and grief. He’s getting there. And damn it, but he’s taking them with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Role reversal! Dramatic Irony! Derek gets to be the healthiest psyche in the room! (Well, except that when his family lives, he ends up being the put-upon middle child rather than the manly man of the family)
> 
> Seriously, he's a lot more interesting when he's not being the brooding hero, and Scott is also more interesting when you pry back all that do-gooder behavior and start thinking about what might be driving it besides altruism. There's a fine line between that and self-destruction sometimes. And S1 Scott going on and on about how everybody loves Allison, and I know he was infatuated but it was ridiculous that other characters also were written to acknowledge he was right about that. She's too good to just be a sheltered little princess who gets forgiven for everything even when she's "wising up" (I note Derek was the one character who kind of called her out on that, after Erica died). So basically, this trio is about exploring the broken angles to Scott and Allison, and how they've fitted them back together (because one of their mutual saving graces is how determined they are), and how Derek slowly figured out where the sharp edges are and where he can put a finger without getting sliced.
> 
> I think a major problem with TW is that they plateau character development. For example, Scott's idealism annoys me, but I do find it realistic for a teenager to be that way for a certain period. I just don't find it realistic that he'd _stay_ that way. Characters need to grow after they screw up.
> 
> I realize a lot of readers come for the idealized porn, and look, unless you're writing an ultra-realistic documentary, you end up glossing sex to some extent. But I like the personalizing characteristics you can put into an imperfect sex scene. And I also don't think 'imperfect' and 'hot' are mutually incompatible.


	21. Epilogue 3: Stiles and Peter

The first time Stiles visits, he shows up unannounced at Peter’s law firm about three weeks after Peter and his family head home to the East Coast. Peter is in the middle of strong-arming a competing associate off the deal he’d had to drop in order to fly out to Beacon Hills, and by the time he comes back to his office and realizes who his visitor actually is, it’s late. Taking the man out to dinner at a pricy restaurant is just decent manners, never mind Peter’s reputation or Stiles’ still considerable magic or anything else.

“It certainly wasn’t a bribe,” Peter mutters, pinning Stiles’ hips down to the bathroom counter. 

“Yeah, well, not if I’m getting the pasta. Dry-aged prime rib, maybe, if I’d ordered that, but not—not—oh, come on, you can get deeper than that, I saw that dick,” Stiles grunts, and then he thumps the skinny heels of his feet into Peter’s buttocks.

Peter’s foot skids and he loses his grip on Stiles’ left hip, his weight tipping unexpectedly. He’d complain—about that, and about the annoying _fwap_ noise Stiles’ shapeless khaki pants make against his shins, and the whole idea of public bathroom sex to begin with, as if either man or wolf want to fuck where other males shit themselves—but when he skids, his head plunges into the sweat-perfumed crook of Stiles’ neck and his nose is suddenly inflamed with the instinctive hooks of salt and blood and heat and he’d rather just fuck the man.

So he does, curling his freed hand around the chilly marble edge of the counter and pressing the flats of his teeth as hard into the flesh of Stiles’ throat as he dares. Stiles’ stream-of-consciousness verbalizations quiet to a burble interspersed with an increasing number of harsh sucked _hahs_ ; his fingers scrabble and jab into the meat of Peter’s shoulders, sending spikes of pain just the right side of rough down Peter’s spine. His ass is delightful.

It’s good sex, if Peter says so himself. “Great sex,” Stiles says too, still wobbling, though he bats Peter off in favor of figuring out how to reshape his hideous pants back over his hips. “Seriously, and I know my victory sex from my rebound and fuck-off and fuck-up sex, believe me. Though again, that brings up my longstanding point about what exactly _does_ the bite upgrade, because nobody ever wants to admit to the ‘before’ part of the survey and why not, it’s not like—”

Peter tears his eyes away from admiring the lovely sloping curl, echoing the jawline, that his teethmarks have made down the side of Stiles’ throat. “Excuse me?”

Stiles looks up. Then grins and ambles over, and puts his filthy, unwashed hands on Peter’s damp but otherwise unstained shirt-tails. “Oh, we gonna talk about possessive instincts now?” he says, smearing his fingers across hand-sewn premium American Pima cotton. “’cause I have files on this, and it’s _all_ biased, because we just get the expansionists. And not only that, the ones who are crazy enough to want to expand to Beacon Hills, right? And Scott. But Scott is Scott, and even he still got all triggered when I got kidnapped by a wannabe alpha to be his Emissary slave—”

“Who?” Peter says.

“It was planned, I was fine,” Stiles says immediately back, and then he blinks. It’s obviously a stock response, and even more tellingly, he’s clearly annoyed at having it pop out of his mouth. He frowns, then sticks his hands into the trousers Peter’s trying to rezip. “Also, um, demon magic? By the time we got to the asshole’s house, I had him sobbing about his childhood religion class to the ghost of his ultra-fundamentalist grandma. And the worst part was actually the fact that his shitty little serial-killer house in the woods didn’t get good cell reception, so after he blew his brains out, I had to hike three miles in flip-flops.”

“Stiles,” Peter says, intercepting one wrist. He can’t intercept the other without dropping his pants, so he sighs and lets Stiles fondle his cock. And twists the arm he is holding up, so that when the silver tattoos start to wind their way up the forearm, he can lick along one while watching where the flush starts in Stiles’ face. “Stiles. You can’t just _say_ you drove someone to madness.”

“What, I gotta show you too?” Stiles says, grinning even wider, as if he isn’t fully informed on what that communicates to a werewolf. “Like with this dumbass who thinks he’s going to pip you to partner, that’s what you’re saying? I mean, not that your plan to manipulate him into getting messed up by the local lizardmen chapter isn’t hot as fuck either. Or wouldn’t work. I mean. If you’re into five-year-plans. I’m just saying, I feel like two is doable.”

The second round of sex is quite satisfying too, even if they have to relocate it to the parking lot in order to preserve Peter’s ability to use the place for business meals. And so is the third round, once they’ve gotten back to Peter’s apartment and an actual, custom-ordered for full support in all positions, mattress. So yes, Stiles very successfully distracts Peter. As mentioned, it was late, and Peter was coming off a fairly stressful situation, and he didn’t exactly have any warning that Stiles was coming.

So when he falls asleep, pleasantly exhausted with one hand on Stiles’ knee as Stiles drowsily rattles on about the vintage witchhunt engravings Peter’s got on his wall this season, he doesn’t think anything of it. Which is a _complete_ amateur move, and no, he doesn’t need his sister to tell him so.

“I really wasn’t saying anything,” Talia says, blinking ridiculously big eyes, as she sits at the island in Peter’s kitchen and makes it clear with gratuitously nonverbal cues that she’s willing and prepared to outwait him making breakfast if that’s what it takes to make him talk to her. “I don’t have to be able to read your mind either—”

“I _did_ read your note about John saying they could still do that,” Peter snaps.

Talia stares at him. Peter turns his shoulder to her and looks at his espresso-maker and mentally runs through how he’d have to alter the piping in order to convert it for wolfsbane brewing. It’s a comforting exercise for him. It allows him to take a few deep breaths, and put away how she even knew to come over, and…

Stiles didn’t stay the night. In fact, he’s not even in town anymore, this having turned out to just be an extended layover on the way to him visiting Lydia, who apparently, when she’s not busy threatening Stiles’ romantic connections, attends MIT. He did leave an explanation for his sudden departure behind, in the form of fifteen long text messages about how he’s really bizarre and he knows that and he also does know it’s not all down to Peter’s one-night-babysitting gig but he’s going to mention that anyway, two emails with zip files attached that claim to hold scans of rare Igbo divination texts, one direct-messaged ‘ghost’ meme, _and_ a thick envelope that’s sitting in front of Talia, still unopened.

“He’s weird,” Talia finally says.

Peter snorts before he can help himself. Then, after another breath, he turns around and looks at her. She shrugs, her eyes annoyingly sympathetic, and then pretends her fingers aren’t inching towards the envelope. “Oh, just open it,” he mutters, taking out his cup and then putting in a new one.

“I’m on tea this week, you know I can’t do espresso when I have to deal with our financial advisor,” Talia scolds him absently, as she slits the envelope at one end with a claw.

“You always say that and then he talks you into another board position and you stay up longer than you should before you admit you might as well just go find an uppity alpha to beat up,” Peter points out. He stops to eat an orange, then swallows his pride and goes over to see what’s in the envelope. “Talia. The entire point of hiring a Taoist Immortal is so you can get long-term forecasts from someone who is impossible to kill.”

“Well, I _know_ , and he makes us plenty of money and charges a very decent commission for it,” his sister mutters. Her nose wrinkles. “It’s just I know he doesn’t even need the commission, he really does it just because he thinks I’m adorable.”

Peter shrugs, because that is the truth, and also, the same motivation for at least half of his and Talia’s interactions, and Talia makes another face at him. Then she empties out the contents of the envelope, and for the next fifteen minutes, they’re both absorbed in puzzling them out.

It’s mostly paperwork—copies of various official reports, with one flash drive that turns out to house videos pulled off social media. Put together, they tell the story of how in the three intervening weeks, some idiot calling himself a Satanist came to Beacon Hills, attempted to brainwash local teenagers into a creating a cult with him at the center, and got his ass handed to him at the point he tried a Black Mass on the site of Peter’s old family home.

“I thought they came up with a better cover story than Gerard Argent being into the occult,” Talia says, frowning.

“They did. They went with that for the uninformed, but in supernatural circles they’ve been pushing the line that Gerard had a curse laid specifically on him, to make it clear the circumstances aren’t reproducible,” Peter says. He turns his laptop for her to see, then zooms in on the timeline Stiles created to show the online chatter. “I sent over a few things for John to use for seeding, but these ideas that are popping up, they’re completely unrelated. And you see—that detail could only be—”

Talia’s frown deepens. “So somebody _else_ who was there has to be spreading counter-rumors. I’ll have to call John, I want him to be completely clear it’s not us.”

“If they weren’t sure about that, do you think Stiles would’ve showed up here?” Peter says, drinking his espresso. Then, when she twitches, he raises an eyebrow. “Of course, it’s reasonable to still call him. Just for reassurance. Perfectly normal alliance-building behavior. Perhaps an in-person visit might even be in order.”

“Don’t even, Peter, you’re still anger-sipping,” Talia says.

Peter pulls his cup away from his mouth. Then makes himself not grimace. “I have no idea what that is.”

“Yes, you do,” he sister says, relentlessly calm. She reaches over while he’s still slowed by his annoyance and starts shuffling through the timeline. “It’s a first date, Peter. And I realize you know this, but—”

“He’s still chronologically under twenty? And well-versed in magic and combat and everything to do with werewolves except how they function outside of traumatized? And even if he _wasn’t_ that, he’d still be under twenty with a handful, at best, of relationships under his belt?” Peter says. He doesn’t keep his irritation out of his voice because one, she already can smell it, and two, she should have to put up with it, if he has to put up with her delivering shopworn platitudes to him when he didn’t even call her, just texted that he wanted to skip family lunch later today. “Yes, Talia, I _know_. And I don’t need to be lectured on being considerate.”

“I actually—oh.” Talia stops mid-irritated retort and they both look at the last video on Stiles’ timeline.

It’s shot from a phone, but somehow, Peter doubts that it’s been posted anywhere. Publicly, at least. The amount of blood alone would violate the terms of service of every major platform, although personally, he thinks it’s far less than merited.

When it’s done, Talia sits back, tight-lipped. She’s still tense when Peter puts a hand on her arm, but he keeps it there till she finally turns to him.

“At least that means they’ve wrapped up the loose end. And you were already tracking Kali,” he reminds her.

“Well, not _close enough_ ,” she snaps. She’s stiff for another second, and then she slumps back. Rubs one hand over her face, then lets it drop into her lap. “Not what I wanted to call John about, but he deserves—deserves congratulations. And—”

“You were right about letting her get enough slack to hang herself, Talia, so don’t get ruffled about not being there for it,” Peter says. She jerks her head around and he smiles at her, and after a moment she sighs and pokes his arm. “You know that even with video proof, you’re going to have to handle Ennis. You can let John know about that, at least.”

Talia still looks unhappy, but she nods. “Muscled moron. I should make Deuc do it, honestly. He could’ve clued Ennis in about Julia years ago and saved us—well, full moons already set. Anyway. And you know, Peter, it’s not so much about being considerate as remembering this is the first time it’s somebody you very much don’t want to have to kill if it goes south. You know that, right?”

Peter yanks his espresso down before he chokes on it and stares at her. His sister stares back, unsmiling. Her hand does move up once as if she might pat him, or make a pass at his hair, or something gratingly affectionate, but she restrains herself. 

“You can’t kill me. If you end up alpha, you won’t have any time to go off and tell him this whole self-sufficiency thing just makes points to him, and not to you,” is all she says.

“I hate you,” Peter says.

Talia shrugs. “Just make sure John isn’t sneaking down to the police station, would you? He’s still supposed to be on sick leave—”

“Oh, yes, and I suppose you want me to start snooping about for what Jordan likes for Thanksgiving sides, too,” Peter mutters.

“Well, since you’re offering,” Talia says brightly, finally smiling at him.

Peter pauses. Looks at her, then puts his espresso down and rolls his eyes as she slips off the chair and hugs him and rubs his hair. She needs to do that once in a while, and he puts up with it because she is his sister and however annoying she is, she _is_ the only person he trusts to keep an eye on his work politics while he’s out. Because it does appear that he needs to make travel plans.

* * *

“Really, Stiles. Public bathroom sex,” Peter points out.

“They had marble and high-end toiletries and a towel basket! And a guy standing outside to go in after you come out and replace all the towels! At that point isn’t it at least halfway to love hotel status? Which, okay, still not at your preferred quality level, I get that, but…” Stiles says, dropping his chalk and his dagger and giving Peter big, pleading eyes. “No?”

“No, Stiles,” Peter says. “No.”

Stiles stops thinking the helpless-kitten ploy will work on Peter—he’s been up for the last thirty hours straight, is the only explanation Peter can think of—and rolls his eyes and restarts on the binding circle he’s been trying to do for the last ten minutes. “Oh, come on—”

He yelps and squat-hops out of the circle, then stares at the taser Lydia is pointing at Peter to keep him from charging her. Her and the stiletto heel she’d nearly jammed into Stiles’ hand. “That’s the third sigil you’ve reversed by accident,” Lydia says to Stiles, completely unrepentant. “I am _not_ going to stand here and end up missing my midterms because you’re too tired to remember the difference between banishing a lamia and marrying one.”

“What? That’s not…okay, it’s the wrong one, but it wouldn’t do _that_ ,” Stiles says.

Lydia stares at him. Stiles twitches one shoulder, then the other, and then he sighs and takes Scott’s hand as the other man helps him off to the side. He sacks out on top of the airbed on that side of the room, looking dejected, and then Peter can’t see him anymore because Peter is looking at Lydia’s implacable glare. There has to be something else besides banshee in the woman’s background—more than a touch of basilisk, in his opinion.

“Finish it up properly and you can take him home,” she orders.

“I didn’t realize that was how consent works around here,” Peter snorts, but he does what she says, because he did not, in fact, come to Beacon Hills _again_ to spend his time mired in this town’s absurd percentage of improbable homicides.

He also didn’t return just to have sex with Stiles, which confuses Stiles to no end. Witness:

“Um, what?” Stiles says, blinking owlishly as Peter removes the man’s hands from his ass, pushes Stiles into the backseat, and then goes around to the front. “Hey, for the record, immune to lamias, in case you actually _are_ worried about consent—”

“Stiles, my family has paid for exactly as many of the police cars in this town as we ever want to,” Peter says. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to cause any new issues between your best friend and his father.”

Scott had looked embarrassed about having to slow his and Lydia’s approach with the rest of the gear, but when Stiles glances over and spots him and sighs, he doesn’t look nearly as relieved as Peter would have expected. He does deposit his bags and himself in the backseat with Stiles, but then he hands the keys to Lydia. “Really appreciate it,” he says with apparent sincerity to Peter. “Especially since Dad’s been pretty good about Derek randomly showing up too, actually.”

Peter frowns. Stiles cackles and slaps Scott on the shoulder; Scott hunches, wholesomely regretful about his little moment of sarcasm, and then proceeds to explain, sincerely, that Peter’s nephew is busy botching their cover-up at the morgue with Allison, so now Peter has to go fix _that_ too.

Also:

“Okay, I will give you the public bathroom sex, even though I have a semester and a half of college left and am going to be losing valuable relationship immaturity development time,” Stiles sulks, arms crossed low over his chest. He kicks his sneakers at the carpet and pretends he isn’t interested in the way Peter is taking his time about smoothing the finger-rumples out of his sweater. “But this is a private office. With a lock. A good one. I should know, Dad had me upgrade it twice because I kept picking it.”

Peter tugs at his sweater, checks how his pecs are outlined in the door’s glassed insert, and then pulls the hem up over his belly to reseat the fabric. Because it’s cashmere and while cashmere is quite durable when treated properly, it does stretch like nobody’s business. And because if Stiles is going to shove his tongue in Peter’s mouth and Peter has to willingly stop that from proceeding, Peter is going to make sure the two other werewolves nearby are smelling it on _both_ of them. He’s got a point to make, which is not the same as being a saint. “This is also not about bribery, Stiles.”

“No, just psychological and emotional manipulation,” Stiles mutters, shifting in his seat. “Okay, fine, you didn’t come down and help us out just because I look really cute sucking your cock with your bite-marks all over my neck and my fingers stuffed up my ass, getting ready for your big bad blow-me-out werewolf cock.”

Peter’s fingers slip. He doesn’t rip the sweater, but he does scratch himself. He looks at Stiles, who stares right back, brows slightly raised, and for once, Derek’s timing is spot-on when he suddenly opens the door.

Of course, Derek immediately closes it, and then looks miserable when Peter opens it again and walks out. “Do I have to deal with this?” Derek mumbles, breathing through his mouth.

“I think we’re done for today, so Derek and I are going back to our hotel,” Peter says as pleasantly as he can, to Scott and Allison and Lydia, who are all standing behind Derek and looking, with varying degrees of shame, as if they also wish they weren’t an audience to this. “We’ll see you all at breakfast tomorrow. Or lunch, if that’s more convenient. I know we’re all tired, so we won’t stand on social niceties.”

“What,” Derek says.

“What,” Stiles says. “But Lydia said you’re taking me home!”

“She’s not my alpha, Stiles,” Peter says. Lydia, he notes, looks mildly approving. She still doesn’t like him, but she will acknowledge his skills. “However, if you insist, I’ll order an Uber for you.”

“ _What_ ,” Stiles says. “Are you kidding me.”

Peter orders him an Uber. 

And: 

“A _double date_?” Stiles says, glaring at Peter while slamming down his armful of balloons, as much as one can such things. Several of them slip out and waft up into his face, forcing him to paddle them down as he continues to hiss at Peter. “A double date. With your nephew, Scott, and Allison Argent. A double date to help the police here set up a community block party. That’s why you came back to Beacon Hills.”

“Well, Stiles, it’s clearly a different town and I’ve been away so long, and it’s generally deemed a good idea to familiarize yourself with your significant other’s background,” Peter says, smiling, as he plucks balloons out of the air and attaches brightly colored plastic ribbons to them. “Speaking of, it does seem as if Scott’s father is working hard to win over his officers as well as the rest of the town. He even asked me if I knew whether hellhounds have issues with wolfsbane like werewolves do.”

Stiles stops batting at the balloons. “And you said…”

“And I said that not being one myself, I’m not a primary authority, but I’d be happy to ask Jordan for him,” Peter says.

The far corner of Stiles’ left eye twitches. He stares at Peter for another moment, then throws his arms up and slouches against the table. “Ugh, why do you have to _do_ that? You’re hot, and amoral, and smart and hot, and then you do that smooth charm thing and it’s hot as hell but it’s not just charming for being charming, it’s like you’re really paying attention like—like—”

“Like I’m dating you?” Peter says dryly.

“ _Yes_ ,” Stiles snaps. Then he goes still. His face pales, then reddens, and a slight silver tinge enters his eyes.

Peter takes a deep breath, and doesn’t reach for the set of charms in his pocket that he made up after a little more research into Stiles’ remaining powers. He smells frustration and an unfortunate amount of disappointment rolling off the man, but not true anger. The shadows in the alley around them do double, then triple, but they never merge together into night.

After another moment, Stiles about-faces and walks off. That was not the reaction Peter had been hoping for, but he makes himself stay where he is. He can sense how delicately things are balanced and he thinks he can still be hopeful. The man is walking off, after all, not storming off.

“You sure about this?” When Peter turns around, Derek’s shoulders have a slightly defensive rigidity to them, but otherwise the man’s surprisingly confident. “Not about the being serious about this part, I meant the…I kind of have to agree with him. Double date here?”

Insightful as well, and much as Peter doesn’t appreciate being sneaked up on, he does want to encourage any stray shoot of intelligence he sees from his nephew. “Well, it was either this or go help out at Lydia’s mother’s campaign office, and one, I don’t want to owe that one a favor. Two, your mother will kill me if Scott’s father gets you into trouble.”

“Mom wouldn’t kill you, she’d kill him and _then_ make you handle all the clean-up,” Derek points out matter-of-factly. McCall and that Argent girl really are doing something for him, Peter has to admit. He hasn’t been so able to focus since he realized getting a driver’s license meant he could go to parties thrown by people Laura didn’t know. “And thanks, but I think Scott’s dad actually is getting better. A little. He does want to make sure Scott doesn’t die.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to keep you alive. Or Allison, for that matter,” Peter says.

Derek grimaces. “Yeah, I know, okay, I’m still looking out for that…but I want to give the guy a chance to not fuck it up. I think Scott’s starting to want to have a dad again, and he…he does deserve—anyway, so is this whole trip going to be watching you and Stiles do this…”

“No,” Peter says, and then silently asks if Derek wants to keep asking questions.

“Okay. Okay, good,” Derek says, because Derek occasionally displays a better sense of self-preservation than his sisters—not that that’s saying much—and then Derek grabs a handful of beribboned balloons. “Good luck with that, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Peter says, bemused.

His nephew makes a face at him and leaves. And passes Stiles coming back the other way. Derek looks sharply over but keeps walking, which is another reason why, if Peter is honest, he’s Peter’s favorite, and Stiles rolls his eyes and almost successfully uses that to mask how nervous he is.

“Okay,” Stiles says. He snags one of the ribbon spools along the way, then cuts off a length and fusses it into a fancy tie before he starts connecting balloons to it. “Okay. So…you take over the law firm yet?”

“Not yet,” Peter says after a moment, still cautious. “The timing is a little tricky—certain balance sheet matters I’d rather have stuck on the managing partner’s legacy than my own. And I take it you’re enjoying the Polynesian string magic book I mentioned?”

Stiles blinks hard, then looks down at the perfect calm-weather knot he’s just made. A smile nearly makes it onto his face before he shakes himself. “Oh, yeah,” he says, and quickly modifies it so that it’s nonmagical. “It’s cool, but I’m still figuring out how that kind of thing would interact with the telluric currents around here, since they’re really different from…so you didn’t just come down to one-up me on what I did?”

“What you did?” Peter says. He pauses, then puts down the ribbon he’d been cutting. “What did you do, Stiles?”

“I—” Stiles starts, looking up sharply. Then he stops. He and Peter look at each other for a few seconds before he snorts, shoulders hunching in a way that’s only superficially embarrassed. “Hey, so, I know we’re gonna do this party, but…when are you flying back? Because you are.”

The man isn’t accusing him, but simply stating something they both know. “Tomorrow afternoon,” Peter says as neutrally as possible, returning the favor. “I have a meeting Monday I can’t shift.”

“Okay, so…are you going to cockblock Derek this whole trip, or do you want to—you could come over to my place at least once while you’re here,” Stiles says. He looks at Peter again, swallowing slightly, his eyes clear of the silver and holding steady. “And there isn’t going to be sex, if you don’t want. You can just watch me play video games and edit my undergrad thesis, and—oh, I got hold of that unexpurgated copy, too. If you want to look at it.”

“I think I could accommodate that in my evening plans,” Peter says slowly, picking up the ribbon again.

Stiles’ mouth twitches, then lets itself smile. A little wry, still holding back, but it is a smile.

So after the block party is over, Peter does go over to Stiles’ house. Stiles’ father is not home, and Scott is too occupied to attend to the Stilinski chores as he tends to, so Peter cooks them dinner. They don’t play video games, but they do talk about Stiles’ classes, and the work Stiles’ father is being offered by the military. And they do have sex.

They have it in Stiles’ bed, after undressing each other. Which still has its ungraceful moments, largely thanks to Stiles’ choice in clothing. And to Stiles figuring out at some point that fingering Peter’s nipple while sucking hard at his jaw disrupts all higher levels of thinking in Peter’s brain, and Peter following up on his suspicions and tonguing the tattoo patterns he can remember up both of Stiles’ arms. But ungraceful can have its own charms—it certainly doesn’t lessen any of the urgency or need both of them feel, or the comfortable, if slightly humid, warmth that settles over them once they’re satisfied each other.

“Thighs,” Stiles says sleepily, squeezing one of Peter’s as he rolls lazily back on top. “Hmm. Might have to reorder my list here. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the arms are still good too, but thighs…”

“Should I be disturbed about the way werewolves seem to break down to anatomy, as far as you’re concerned?” Peter says. Stretching his arms up over his head, working a kink in his back out but also watching Stiles’ eyes run down his chest and back up, and then he flops back, folding his arms under his head. “We’re more than that, you know.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. Then pushes his arms up so that he’s leaning over them to look down at Peter. His ass wiggles around a bit before settling against Peter’s softened but by no means oblivious cock. “Yeah. But also, you have arms and thighs.”

“You tend to get fixated, don’t you?” Peter says.

“Says the guy who has a bigger charm collection than me,” Stiles says. Subsiding onto one arm, his face half-buried in his bicep as he lifts his other hand and shows Peter’s string of charms. He fingers the newest ones before flicking his gaze to Peter, who is deliberately waiting on him. “I know these aren’t because you’re afraid of me. That’s pretty clear at this point. And I think you’re smart enough to know trying to—take me over or something like that—”

Peter raises his brows. “Your friends have a very impressive kill record. Even Scott.”

“Yeah, well, he hates it but he’ll do it, if you push him hard enough. He’ll do it. Everybody underestimates him that way,” Stiles mutters. His face momentarily hardens and Peter silently curses the missteps. But then Stiles shrugs and tosses the charms onto the bedside table, and props himself up again to look at Peter. “So this is what I’m still having problems with. I mean, look, I know my worldview is permanently skewed towards abnormal, but that doesn’t mean I’m not—I’m not _right_. Everything I see is true, it’s just—dreams are true. They might not be real, but they’re still true. And a lot of times them not being real is about being _not yet_ or _not quite_ but it could go that way. I don’t see anything that couldn’t really happen, somewhere or sometime or with some people.”

“No, you don’t. And I’m not altruistic either,” Peter says slowly. “This is motivated by self-interest, Stiles.”

Stiles cocks his head. “Then why?”

“Because I want to,” Peter says. He hesitates, then decides against pushing himself up. He doesn’t think it’d make Stiles leave—he thinks they’re beyond that point. But it’s still set on the edge, he can still feel that, and he very much only wants this to go one way. “Because I want it _this_ way, and not any other way. Because I’m that selfish, if I can’t have it the way I want it, I don’t want it at all.”

“I notice you’re not asking if I want it this way,” Stiles says, dry, in the way he is when he looks at Peter and his eyes are pure brown and yet just as agelessly tired as they are when he’s in the thick of his dreamtime-magic. 

He quirks his mouth, then lifts one hand and pushes it back over the top of his head. Then, so quick it freezes Peter, he pushes forward and presses their lips together and pushes back. He puts his head down on Peter’s shoulder, his one arm trailing down to trace feather-light patterns on the soft, sensitive, nearly hairless flesh of underside of Peter’s forearm.

“I can see that,” he says quietly.

Not quite, Peter thinks. Not quite, and he has to bite back his impatience. He wants it the way he wants it—he too will have to settle for that. He looks at the ceiling—it’s plain white, like a million other ceilings, but in the blankness he thinks he sees a subtle swirling. His imagination, but it’s soothing. It takes his mind off things. “And you? Why not?”

“It’s not why not,” Stiles says. His fingertips slow, and then they resume their patterns as he shifts a little, kisses Peter’s collarbone. “It’s more…can I? Because…because I do really like you, that way. And I guess you’re right, when it’s like that. You have to really see the other person. So just—look, if you can just—just let me see. I’m sorry, I’m fucked-up, but I just need to see, this way.”

He’s putting Peter to sleep. Peter recognizes those patterns, in the last moment before his eyes fully close, and—and yes, Peter does see. He does hear the other man. And he does know what Stiles is doing, and it is exactly what Peter should have expected and Stiles still caught him out and _damn it_.

Damn it. But also…it’s a promise too. Peter heard that, before he drifted off.

In the morning, Stiles isn’t there, but he leaves out a hot breakfast and another fat envelope, which Peter tucks into his bag for the plane ride. Derek shows up afterward, manages to stay silent all the way to the airport, and then finally comes out with it as he and Peter are sitting in the VIP lounge. “Did you kill someone,” Derek says. “You’re smiling like that and it’s creepy and did you—”

“Shut up, Derek,” Peter says, stretching out his legs and checking his phone. Sixteen texts from Stiles already. “Trust me, you’re better off that way.”

“Shit,” Derek says, and goes to get coffee and doesn’t come back till five minutes before boarding.

It’s not really what Peter had planned, but it _is_ what he wants. So Peter keeps smiling.

* * *

Unfortunately, Peter ends up having to revisit Beacon Hills several more times, and has to resign himself to having to add that damn town to his regular itinerary for the foreseeable future. Not because of Stiles so much as because of Laura, who finagles a job for herself out there so she can invade poor Parrish’s life more easily, and because of Derek, who, while he hates Beacon Hills just as much, seems perfectly fine with spending time on the Argent lands in the region. But he does get Stiles traveling in the other direction just as often, and he has small but viable hopes that he might eventually lure the man out of the place.

Still, it’s a surprise to him that when he finally wakes up and finds Stiles curled around him, snoozing into the crook of his neck, they’re neither on the East Coast nor in Beacon Hills. They’re up in Quebec, because of Chris goddamned Argent.

“But maple candy is great, and so is lumberjack food,” Stiles says, nuzzling at Peter’s nape. His hands wander down to Peter’s ass, thumbs sliding into the cleft, and then he lets out a startled huff as Peter arches and humps back into the touch. “Okay, um, then you’re gonna have to hand me the lube, and also, can I just say, if I knew that was gonna trigger _that_ kind of mental porn, I would’ve bought a lot more ironic novelty syrup—”

“Lube,” Peter says, tossing it over his shoulder. Then he plants his hands and spreads his legs, and arches again into Stiles’ growing erection. “Now either fuck me with that or get off so I can fuck myself.”

Stiles snorts. “Okay, never would’ve started switching if I knew you’d be so bitchy about it, but—”

Peter twists around and kisses him. For motivation, although it works counterproductively in focusing Stiles’ attention where Peter wants it, but eventually, Stiles gets around to fucking him. And then he lets his pleasantly wrung-out body spread out across the mattress, settling into its exhaustion, Stiles’ cock still filling him, and he thinks at the least, he’ll fall asleep with the weight and warmth and closeness. Which will make it all the obvious when he wakes up by himself, as he knows he will, and he’s no martyr but he’s also no fool. There’s no point in denying himself at both points.

So when he does wake, and he isn’t by himself, the first thing he does is pull over his charms and test whether it’s a dream.

Stiles jerks sharply and the air swirls thickly around them, silver glittering momentarily where the shadows are deepest. Then he jerks again, less violently, and Peter can’t help holding a breath as the man’s eyes open.

“Oh,” he says. His tone is unreadable, and the sex in the air is still masking anything else in his scent. All his eyes tell Peter is that he is fully aware, with no waking transition. He lies there, for a moment, and then, very deliberately, he pushes closer to Peter. “Hey.”

“Stiles,” Peter finally says. Then forgets the rest, and drops the charms and just presses his forehead against Stiles’ cheek.

The other man makes a small noise, possibly amused, possibly more heartfelt than that, and then draws in a deep breath that wobbles once, near the end. Then Stiles moves his arm, snagging Peter’s wrist and pulling Peter’s arm more closely around him.

“I’m done. I get it, okay, I get he got stuck in dream hell for a couple years so he’s got to rebuild his rep, but two packs of rougarous at once is insane,” Stiles mutters. Pushes his head back into Peter’s throat. “I need a good long nap, and somebody to make sure I don’t wake up for at least a day.”

Peter smiles into his hair. “Well, I think that’s possible. I do have experience in naptimes, after all.”

Stiles is still for a second. “Peter. Was that a babysitting joke. Oh, my God, that _was_ , you asshole—”

“Go to sleep, Stiles,” Peter says, kissing Stiles’ temple to push him back when he tries to raise his head. He keeps his mouth there till the man stops resisting and just grumbles into the bed, then goes back to smiling into his hair. “I promise I won’t tell you any bedtime stories this time.”

“Oh, my _God_ ,” Stiles says.

And then…and then he does go back to sleep, and Peter does watch over him. Without the interruptions this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many animals, wolves included, mark territory using their feces. African hunting dogs also incorporate rolling in their urine and feces after marking a spot, but Peter is an evolved and civilized werewolf.
> 
> The Taoist immortal is a reference to the [Eight Immortals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals), because seriously, if you're going to appropriate from eastern culture, can you stop doing the same stuff? Also, a lot of the myths around them are about how you can genuinely be pacifistic and genuinely be a badass at the same time, from which TW could take some lessons. And, well, I like them because several of them are down-to-earth types you probably wouldn't mind hitting a bar with, and not at all the usual aloof mystic types.
> 
> Several cultures have the concept that you can use knots in magic, but the most well-known version is probably western European folklore connecting knots with weather control and sailing.
> 
> Is putting someone involuntarily to sleep generally what you want in a relationship? No, but Stiles and Peter are both kind of left of mentally normal here.
> 
> Mid-credits scene, because God, but female werewolves get short-changed on TW:
> 
> “Get up. Get _up_ , bitch, you’re better than this sadsack shit act.”
> 
> Tell that to her shattered ribs and all the blood she’s lost, Kali wants to say, but instead she makes herself roll over. And it’s worth it, at least in the sense that the moment she sees what’s in front of her, she actually forgets she’s dying.
> 
> “You’re not dying,” says Julia’s ghost. She is a ghost: she kneels down and puts her hand on Kali’s shoulder and it goes straight through, and an intense cold burns away all of the pain in that spot. “You’re not. You listen to me. You’re not dead yet, and you won’t be if you listen. You get two more feet to the tree and you grab it and you say what I tell you, and neither of us are going to be dead. Got it, you goddamn disappointment?”
> 
> “I—for you—” Kali spits out.
> 
> Julia smiles. And then slaps her, and the freeze of those transparent fingers going through Kali’s head is like getting shoved face-first into a tank of liquid nitrogen. “Took you long enough. Now get the hell to that tree, and get your hand on it, and then we’ll talk about doing things for me. Strategy never was your strong point, you know that, babe. That’s why you need me.”
> 
> Same old manipulative bitch as always, Kali wants to say. But she doesn’t. Instead she turns over, and she starts crawling.


End file.
